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Maid or no maid

mrsconn23mrsconn23 member
First Anniversary First Answer 5 Love Its First Comment
in Wedding Woes

Dear Prudence,
I am a professional woman with a demanding job and a baby. I always figured that after starting a family I’d hire a house cleaner, just as my mother had done. We have the income to do this but my husband objects to this idea. He has listened to my argument that paying a cleaner would give us more quality time with our child and each other, but he says it makes him feel more loved to know that I have cleaned our bathroom myself. He is happy to do his share of the housework and doesn’t want me to contract out my share to a stranger. I don’t know if some women feel a kind of love for their husbands that best finds expression through scrubbing toilets, but, as it turns out, I don’t. I am tempted to secretly hire a cleaner for a few hours each week with my own money and pretend I’ve done the cleaning myself. Would this be wrong?

—Maid to Order

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Re: Maid or no maid

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    PirateBarbiePirateBarbie member
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    I'm very much in favor of hiring a maid service, but not lying about it. 

    DK doesn't want me to hire a maid, because he thinks it isn't worth the money. I'm pushing to get somebody to come 1-2 times a month for deep cleaning stuff, just so we can have more family/free time. I think I'm wearing him down. I can sympathize with Maid to Order.
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    AuntFloAuntFlo member
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    OMG.  She should not secretly do anything.  She should STATE, not ASK, that she's hiring a cleaner.  Then do it.  WTF.
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    thejucheideathejucheidea member
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    Yeah, no, he can go fuck himself. Husband and I are looking forward to the day when we can hire a house cleaner, but until we clear the place of construction mess, there's no point. If that guy's measuring love by bathroom cleanliness, he can kindly gtfo.

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    mrsconn23mrsconn23 member
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    DH and I both want to hire a cleaner to do the bathrooms and other deep cleaning we don't want/like doing.  We just don't have it in our budget right now.  But soon!
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    VarunaTTVarunaTT member
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    So Kuus, at what point do you think you just cross over into assuming all men are assholes?  B/c no, she isn't complaining about him not doing his fair share, she's actually complaining about not wanting to do hers.  So...how is that his fault?
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    ReturnOfKuusReturnOfKuus member
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    edited February 2014
    It's shades of weirdness that he wants her, specifically, to scrub things, not that he just wants it to get done without having to do it himself.  There's a strange undertone of forcing her into some feminine mystique role.
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    mrsconn23mrsconn23 member
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    edited February 2014
    Yes, yes, yes, Kuus.  

    If he doesn't want to scrub the toilet himself, he should just be happy he craps on a clean one, no matter who's hands did the scrubbing.  And if HE'S the one hung up on 'strangers touching his stuff', then he suggest a compromise, and not, "I want YOU to do it wife to show me you love me."  Fuck.that.
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    PMeg819PMeg819 member
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    I resisted a house cleaner for years. Now, I would give up eating 3 meals a day if it meant I could keep her. I think she needs to just say eff him and do it, but don't bother hiding it.
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    pinkshorts27pinkshorts27 member
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    My dad bought my mom a house cleaning service one year for Mother's Day. Best Mother's Day gift ever. A gift for the whole family! It was the same year my mom bought my dad a lawn service for Father's Day. Equally amazing for the whole family!

    This guy is crazy.

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    baconsmombaconsmom member
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    Yeah, I'm with Kuus on this one. If he had an objection to strangers handling stuff, that's what he would have said. This whole "scrubbing toilets shows you love me" business is just - gross. 

    We'd have a maid if we could afford it - and I don't work outside the home very much. I just hate fucking cleaning, yo. My husband is not all, "but it means you love me". He'd much rather see me get this stupid novel edited than have a clean house because of procrastination. 
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    emmyg65emmyg65 member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    This guy sounds like a dick, because of this: "he says it makes him feel more loved to know that I have cleaned our bathroom myself." That's just weird.

    FWIW, we plan to hire a house cleaner once a month once we have a baby and I. cannot. wait.
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    thejucheideathejucheidea member
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    All of this talk about maids cleaning toilets made me have an acid flashback to a horrifying conversation my born and raised in rural Tennessee grandmother and I had IN PUBLIC about maids. She was talking about her new maid and I told her we were interested in getting a maid once the house was in order, and she told me that if the maid was white, we needed to clean the toilets before she came, as she always left the toilets as-is for her black maids but you had to prep them for the white maids.

    I'm pretty sure that my heart stopped and all of the color drained from my face because WHAT THE FUCK..

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