If You Could Afford It, Would You Get A Maid

In My Humble Opinion
21

Shoot, who can’t afford a maid in Thailand? The going rate seems to be 2000 baht (US$66) a month – that’s month, mind you – for someone to come in anywhere from three to five times a week. The rate seems to stay steady regardless of how many times they come in.

But the wife is adamant against it. She doesn’t like strangers fooling around with our stuff. Her family has had mostly bad experiences with maids. I wouldn’t mind paying for it, but she says maybe when we’re old and decrepit. (I mean older and more decrepit than now.)

22

Can and do have one.

My wife and I both work, she helps mum in law with the cleaning so mum in law can take care of the sprog.

Also helps with cleaning and whatever else is required.

Here it doesn’t make sense to hire part time, because the cost of part time, for anything actually helpful is close to a full timer anyway.

23

In fact, now that I think of it, quite a few farangs (Westerners) over here end up becoming romantically involved with their maids. This has led to situations I’ve heard of in which the maid at some point in the relationship suggests the pair getting a, um, maid.

24

Heh, having the masale stick the dick in the help is never a good idea :frowning:

here, you have a bonus - if the maid gets pregnant, she gets sent home (and she has to undergo a test every year…hmm or is it 6 months)

25

We have a housekeeper come once every 2 weeks, for about 4 hours to do the heavy cleaning/dusting stuff. It’s SO worth the money, and we can keep up with the day-to-day stuff without feeling overwhelmed.

I’d hire a chef and a driver well before a full-time maid/housekeeper, though.

26

I like knowing exactly where everything is. It’s bad enough when my wife moves things and cleans up, but at least she is always around to ask, “hey, where’s the…”.

27

Because I live in Indonesia, where maids are cheap, I can afford household help and I have it. We live in a huge house (a perk of being an expatriate) that would be impossible to maintain otherwise.

When I am back in the US I don’t mind not having help - life is simply set up differently, and it is easy to manage without. Even if I could afford a maid in the US, I doubt I’d want one.

28

I have a maid service that comes once a month. It’s worth it to me: I hate cleaning the bathrooms.

29

I can and have one and she comes every week. It makes such a difference in our life.

30

no I am embarrassed of how dirty my bathroom is

31

I’d love someone to come in once a month and do a heavy clean, stuff like dusting which I hate doing because it sets my allergies off.

32

Sure would. I hate housework and garden maintenance and all that stuff.

I’ve even considered, when fantasising about living a wealthy lifestyle, of getting a chauffeur, because I don’t drive, but that may be going one step too far.

33

We have one. Have for more than a decade.

That’s part of the basic Chance household deal: Cleaning service for her, lawn service for me. Makes for a happier marriage.

34

We had one and are about to get another, s/he will clean twice a week, which is more than I ever do.

35

Had maids when I lived in Latin America. I presently have a houseboy who keeps the place clean and does the laundry. At first it was creepy, but you can get used to anything.

36

You do, get over it, that is.

My wife and I have had a cleaning lady (I don’t like the word ‘maid’, but that’s a personal issue, I guess) for going on 10 years now. Actually, we’ve had a few over that span; they tend to last a few years at most before various circumstances cause them to have to leave, e.g., pregnancy, marriage, too many clients, leaving the business, etc…, and we’re back to interviewing a replacement.

Anyway, we realized quite quickly that it is simply inconvenient to stay in the house with the cleaning lady as this can be 2, sometimes up to 5 hours, depending on what my wife needs her to do. We’ve never had an issue with theft, although things have been broken over the years, which is frustrating. We even had a somewhat funny circumstance, although not funny to the cleaning lady, when she broke the shower door sliding track from the inside and couldn’t get out. We were home at the time, so she was only panic-stricken for a few moments, but that cost me a couple of hundred bucks to have fixed. My point is things get broken from time to time, and I guess you just have to expect it. But theft? Thank goodness I’ve never had to experience that.

I could afford a live-in, and I certainly have the room, but that’d be overkill. We don’t have children, so it is just us. We’re more out of the house than in it, and have entire rooms we don’t use at all.

My wife was strongly hinting around getting someone who can cook as well as clean, but I put the kibosh on that idea. I’m not really all that comfortable with my wife toiling in the kitchen, and thank goodness she only does it when she really wants to, so I’m sure I couldn’t handle a complete stranger cooking for us on a standard basis. If I’m hungry, I can get my butt in the kitchen and make something myself, or order in.

A point to consider is the assessment of one’s needs and lifestyle should be factors just as important as cost when deciding on whether or not to use a cleaning service in one’s home.

Also, something my wife learned the hard way, a cleaning person is an employee, not a friend, and one should maintain that mindset with dealing with anyone performing a service for which they are being paid. It is easy to let familiarity set in because the person is in your home, especially with increased frequency. They are there to do a job, nothing more, and if you believe you are unable to keep the relationship on that level, then you should seriously consider an alternative.

37

I am recovering from a long period of low intensity depression in which I let my apartment slip in to a dire state of squalor, mountains and mountains of rubbish and filth,

Nobody knew how bad I had let every get, and I was afraid that my friends and family would find out. Every time I tried to clean up on my own, the enormity of the task paralysed me, and it got worse and worse

This summer I found the nerve to ask the nice cleaning lady from my work if she would consider helping me clean out my apartment, Nadja an extremely sympathetic immigrant from Afghanistan,

I agreed to play her 200 euro for 2 days work, she wanted to do it for free actually, considered it her Muslim duty* somehow…but I got her to accept the money.

It has been 7 months since she helped me and my apartment is still (bachelor) clean

  • Minor moment of panic on my part was when she started putting my books in place and I realised that a complete collection of Rusdie’s including the Satanic Verses lay under the rubble
38

When I was younger my mom would clean the house every Sunday from top to bottom. She would crank up the tunes and go to town. One song that became popular in those formative years was Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money”. That song made me always feel guilty and I would pitch in every time I heard it (and she caught wise and made that the second song on her cleaning playlist).

That later translated to me feeling really guilty when someone around me was cleaning and I was sitting on my duff. So I couldn’t have a maid unless they were there when I wasn’t.

39

We can afford it and I talked my wife into hiring someone once. Although she didn’t say anything at the time it was obvious that she didn’t like other people cleaning her house. Plus, she had to clean beforehand, you know, so the maids wouldn’t think she was a dirty person. She was hyper-critical afterward and fired them for being 10 minutes late to the second appointment. Probably not going to repeat that experiment anytime soon.

40

Nope. I’m a private person, I don’t want some strange person wandering around in my home if I can help it.