Why I Haven't Hired a Housekeeper

Laura at 11D wrote about her pleasure in having a clean house but her vague sense of unease, even guilt, in relying on the labors of another to help achieve it.  Then, because she was challenged not to feel guilty, she offered some reasons for her guilt.

I know I've written about this in the past, but I want to write again about why we have not hired a house cleaner.  Some of our reasons are philosophical, similar to those Laura outlines.  Some of them are rooted in past experience.

Specifically, we hired a cleaner about three months after the babies were born.  We were put in touch with a reliable and highly sought-after local cleaning coordinator, a Latina who spoke English to us but sent employees to do the actual cleaning.  Her employees were Spanish-speaking women who did not speak enough English to say much more than hello.

The first cleaner did a decent enough job, but she didn't show up two weeks later.  When we tried to contact her, her phone had been disconnected.

The second cleaner did a haphazard job mopping the floors (our primary reason for hiring cleaners at that time) and she made no dent at all in the two weeks of grime in our shower/tub.  I went upstairs after she left had had the tub restored to basic tub shininess within 15 minutes.  After she left, we called the coordinator and explained that we would look elsewhere.

When we priced out cleaning services via companies that would pay social security taxes (never mind health care benefits), we discovered that the prices were considerably higher than those of "independent contractors."  While the "informal network" of cleaners fit our budget, the on-the-books cleaners did not (at that time).  We have since done all our cleaning ourselves.

On several occasions since moving to the Southeast from New England, we have been encouraged by friends to hire their cleaners for additional hours.  The rates are, to put it mildly, dirt-cheap.  The cleaners are all Spanish-speaking women with extremely limited English-language vocabularies.  Paying social-security taxes or otherwise reporting the payments is strongly discouraged.

That piece of the puzzle alone makes me sick to my stomach.  I will never do that again.

If you want to know when employment turns to exploitation, look no further than the woman who cleaned our floors and scrubbed our toilets, who had no phone number and no forwarding address only two weeks later.  Maybe it was all perfectly legitimate, maybe she just exercised her free will as an independent citizen of this country to move on -- but I sure as hell doubt it.

Cleaning my house should not be an underground activity conducted by people living on the margins of our economy.  My aunt for many years hired a local woman to clean her house, a farmer's wife who reported all her income and furnished documents to her employers every year at tax time.  I'd be more than happy to do that.  Not one of the people I know locally with house cleaners has such an arrangement.

Cleaning personnel who are "independent contractors" exist to under-report their own income and to alleviate the middle-class guilt of their employers, who are pursuing plausible deniability when it comes to social-security and Medicaid taxes.  That everyone benefits, in the short run, from these practices does not make them an acceptable choice for me.

The local companies who offer cleaning contracts and pay corporate taxes?  Charge enough money to make their services a whole lot less of a bargain.  And when I asked them about the stringency of their employee documentation and the scope of their benefits, they laughed at me.

It's estimated that 40% of undocumented workers in this country are here to do personal labor in middle-class homes.  These workers are our nannies, our house cleaners, our lawn-care providers.  They are vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation, and physical danger.  They are the punching-bags of our political leaders.  They have been pushed from their own countries by poverty and are being pulled here, border enforcement or no border enforcement, by our demand for cheap goods and cheaper services.

I won't participate in that process.  Not for all the clean toilets in the world.

Comments

[AmericanFamily]

We talked about these issues when we decided to hire someone to clean for us.

We have used two different companies so far and we really grilled them about whether or not their employees are legal. With Mr. A working the kind of job he has, we won't risk illegal workers just to save some money because it could mean he could lose his job.

Our service definitely costs more than hiring an independent person. Curiously, all of the individuals who have cleaned our house have been white. I wonder if the agency is sending us white cleaners in an attempt to assure us that they aren't undocumented.

[Suz]

I wish that I could put our reluctance to hire a housekeeper as eloquently or with as much sense of social justice. Plainly put, I feel guilty asking someone to do the type of chores that have been my responsibility since I was little. You fold your own laundry. You put it away. You clean your room.

[Mrs. Coulter]

Interesting affect of living in Washington DC: it is possible to find nannies and housekeepers who are legal (or at least, appear to be legal). There is significant demand for legal workers since political careers can be torpedoed by hiring illegal immigrants. The couple who cleaned our house appeared to be legal (they had SS#s--I know that isn't definitive proof, but they weren't looking to be paid under the table).

[Sarah]

I've only had my house professionally cleaned by a friend of our family (the husband of the duo, a white male and the underachiever of sorts--he certainly makes less than his wife). I paid him. He pays taxes. And I have to say I the economic guilt I felt was that I wasn't giving a poorer person or an immigrant a chance to get a leg up. Cleaning may not be glamorous but it has more inherent flexibility than a factory job. And paying someone puts food on their table.

It interest me how cleaning has to spark come level of guilt, whether it is why am I not doing it myself or am I participating in an unethical arrangement? I personally hate cleaning and when we had our friend clean, I actually hated the part where I had to get the house de-cluttered for him to come. We moved further away from him and now we only have him out occasionally, it is just too far.

If we were local to each other, I would highly recommend him. Even if I am on the fence over whether hiring a white male to clean my house is a feminist progress or not...

[liz]

Amen. We let go our lawn guys for this reason. The folks we had do our cleaning were documented.

My mom sponsors her cleaning ladies for green cards, pays ss herself, etc. As each one "graduates" she gives them a citizenship present. _AND_ she pays them well.

Currently, we have no cleaners (can't afford to do it right) and no mowers (can't find anyone WILLING to let us do it right)...

[anonfornow]

My husband's father was an undocumented worker in the US for a while, before finding a way to emigrate legally to Canada. As such, my husband grew up very much in communities that do the housecleaning (certainly here in Canada, these jobs seem divided based on ethnic origin - nannies vs house cleaners vs ...). His view of these arranged is much much more practical than mine - essentially, it's a job. He thinks that paying people to do something is inherently a good action, possibly comparable to charity/good works. Redistribution of wealth. It's a way to not starve. Sure, it has very little possibility for advancement, it's not glamorous - but these are not people with many options, and they are happy to have the money which can in many cases allow them to send money to family elsewhere who can make than 10 or 20$/month go very far.

Of course, you may be arguing that by hiring undocumented workers, or people "under the table" to do tasks you consider menial, you are encouraging immigrants to enter the US - which is possible, certainly, but if someone is coming from a bad enough situation, it will take an awful lot to prevent them from entering the country.

It's a complex issue - but I think it's possible that your guilt is misplaced, or at least borne entirely out of privilege. I am willing to wager that few people from a community that contains people who do that kind of cleaning work would think your guilt was well justified - though perhaps the US-Canada gap is larger than I thought.

[alsoanonfornow]

We go back and forth. For years I had a woman who both sat and cleaned when I was still trying to make progress on my PhD. She was an independent contractor, but paid taxes appropriately, etc.

Now we use a legit service, which is much, much more expensive and I also have a lot more guilt around it. The woman who is currently cleaning for us has a similar opinion to anonfornow. She is thrilled to be here and have a job, her two daughters are getting an education at a local school which is much better than anything they would have had if they were not living in the states, and if cleaning houses is a way to give them that education then she is happy to do so. It made me feel slightly better about the whole thing.

[Lisa V]

We had the roof replaced on our old house. There was one estimate that was much lower than the others. We called BBB, there was nothing against them, they had been in business for 25 years, they offered a guarantee. We hired them. The morning they came their crew was made up of entirely of Hispanic workers who didn't speak English. They worked from 6:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. We didn't notice any real breaks. We felt guilty as hell. No wonder they were cheap and still did a good job. The workers gave us the discount.

It's similar to shopping at Walmart to me. Yes, there are people who are grateful to have even what we consider a low paying job. There are people who want to buy products cheap. But really the corporations are not giving us those discounts, the workers are. We're eliminating the middle class here by not giving people the opportunity to do fair work at a real wage.

[Shandra]

I actually pay my nanny/babysitter to clean, and she charges me slightly more than she does to watch my son. I had a good laugh over that one with her but she had reasons that were good ones, mostly that she finds it harder on her body and she needs more rest, so she charges more.

She has a lot of qualifications and why she's chosen the jobs she has remains a bit of a mystery to me. I know she's an outlier, but there it is... no guilt. She has a plan to "turn me over" to a friend of hers who's spending 6 months travelling when she gets back (said friend owns a small cleaning service).

Oh my husband just reminded me that his uncle and aunt own a cleaning service and a really large beautiful home. I know they have staff now and that they pay them about $15/hr on the books, but this is out west in Canada where jobs are plentiful (when we were out there this summer all the fast food restaurants had signs out: $13/hr! bonus after three months!). Still, in that area (small town) they aren't generally illegal workers or being completely stiffed.

In other words I guess I think that the issues around cheap labour and illegal immigration, while -definitely- not only American and we definitely have those issues here too, are not really just a function of the domestic worker's role... I think it is a pretty complex combination of immigration and employment law, social services (or lack thereof), and social convention.

[K]

We tried cleaners a few years ago. They were white, educated and ran a great business. But it still wasn't for us for a myriad of other reasons.

[Shannon]

When we were in Hawaii, there was this radio call-in show about local ecological concerns and a native Hawaiian guy called up to complain about the local white hippy-types who were trying to restrict native fishing. Long story short, the Hawaiian guy said, "look, we were here first. We've been fishing here for hundreds of years. We know what we're doing. You can't even clean your own houses. Don't tell us what to do!"

The way that made me feel sums up why I have always been reluctant to hire a cleaner.

It just seems like I should clean up my own life's messes. Eventually my kids will be able to clean up most of theirs. If it ever seems like I have too much cleaning to do for myself, I have to think I am living beyond my allotment of space on the planet and I need to downsize.

[Cates]

I just finished reading a book entitled "And Nanny Makes Three." It was a pretty bad book, sort of tabloid sociology, but it had all these long, delicious quotes from bitchy moms and bitter nannies.

What struck me was how frequently the moms insisted that their nannies *loved* their jobs, were *thrilled* to be here, how their work as a nanny benefited their entire extended family, etc etc etc. The nannies themselves had a very different story to tell: they were bitter, they scorned and resented their employers (though they hid their disdain for obvious reasons), they felt trapped and used.

This conversation is remarkably similar, at least from the side we're getting.

[Denise]

I am employed by a consulting company on a 1099 basis, which means that I am a representative of XYZ Consulting, but I am not salaried--I invoice my boss monthly for the hours I work, and he invoices my clients and then sends the money (minus a cut) back to me. He doesn't take out taxes; it's my job to report my income accurately and pay taxes.

He has never asked me to prove that I pay my taxes, either. I would be insulted if he did ask. It's none of his business. I do pay them, of course, but there's a huge incentive for me to do so.

I don't know if my housekeeper is illegal. I assume she is legal, because she emigrated here to be near her daughter, who is a citizen (but maybe not). She is in her 60's and doesn't speak English well. Her native language is not Spanish or any other commonly-spoken language. We provide good working conditions (low stress, she works at her own pace, we don't hassle her or ask her to work harder than she does). We pay her an hourly rate that is more than what she would receive as a housekeeper at the nursing home, and far more than she would get in a restaurant or other service-industry job.

I have no idea if she pays her taxes.

I don't have the slightest bit of guilt about having someone else pick up after me, just like my clients don't have the slightest bit of guilt about paying me to do things that, really, they would be perfectly able to do for themselves.

I used to work as a nanny. I didn't feel used--it was MUCH cushier than working in a factory, a job I tried for about 10 minutes before quitting--but I did feel trapped. I hated having the mothers hovering over me, criticizing every little thing. When we set out to make child-care arrangements I made sure I never put someone in that position. I paid a higher salary for a mature woman with her own home whom I could trust to work unsupervised.

I don't know if she pays her taxes, either.

[stefan]

Two quick remarks without having read the comments yet:

1) in general not hiring somebody who is willing to work at a given wage decreases that person's welfare. So you are not helping the poor illegal women who are willing to work for you by not hiring them. You may be helping the people who produce the goods and services you spend the money you do decide to spend the money on, which will include both much higher income people and lower income people (in China).

2) illegal aliens paying Fica taxes are not entitle to Social Security benefits, so you cannot argue that forcing them to report Fica income and pay Fica taxes helps them. Now this situation may change in the future, but retrospective Social Security entitlement from contributions when people had illegal status seems politically unfeasible.

So it's unclear to me what your motivation here is. It must be some 2nd best argument that would need to be elaborated.

[Anjali]

I've hired a cleaner once. She was white, a former dental hygenist who was looking to do something else that gave her more flexibility time-wise. She paid taxes and charged an arm and a leg. I felt no guilt hiring her, though I don't know whether I'll ever hire cleaning people again.

But I also agree wholeheartedly with Stefan's point #1, and could not dismiss hiring immigrants to clean my house for the socio-political reasons you've mentioned. I just feel weird about other people (no matter what their race or immigrant status) cleaning up after me.

[Elizabeth]

As Mrs. Coulter said, I don't think in DC the division is between "contractors" being off the books and "employees" being on -- there are true self-employed contractors around.

Cates, I think there are different issues with housekeepers and nannies. People sometimes convince themselves that their nannies love their children so much that they'd be part of their lives if money weren't an issue. I don't think anyone believes that housecleaners love their jobs, just that it's an honest way to make a living.

And most housecleaners work for multiple families, which gives them more of an ability to walk away from an abusive situation.

[lisa]

Interesting-I just made a brief reference to this on my blog. We finally agreed last spring that the money for cleaning is well spent, and I started interviewing potential people. We won't hire someone undocumented, and there are a lot of those in our neighborhood. I also knew that, as thoroughly as we clean on our own, we wouldn't be happy with the superficial approach of a lot of the big companies. We finally settled on an independently owned bonded eco friendly service, owned by a white male with no employees (thus he does all the cleaning himself). But he had no openings, and, a week later, he raised his rates. We have continued to do our own cleaning. ~lmc

[lisa]

I will add, that I don't feel guilty paying people to clean-it's no different than changing my oil. I did it myself when I was in grad school, but now I can afford to pay someone to do it and I can spend my time doing other things.

[loren]

We hired housecleaners that come every two weeks from Merry Maids starting a month ago. They get the job done to my satisfaction, but you're right - it gets expensive. Somewhere around $1800 / year for twice a month.

We probably won't continue for very long, just because I could do just as good of a job for free but with a good afternoon's worth of work. (Someone bought us a gift certificate.) Sometimes it's just nice to know you can sit back and relax without thinking about everything you have to clean when you get back to it.

[Jen @ amazingtrips]

I don't have much brain capacity at the moment to come up with anything more to write than "Wow. This makes good sense. I never thought of it that way."

Ok, except this. We did have help, directly from TJ, Mexico come once every two weeks, but I wasn't happy with the job that they were doing. We do have a guy cut our grass once a week, but he has an entire crew that works with him. I've never asked to see their papers. Maybe I will when they are here tomorrow!

[Ariella]

I live in Madison, WI, and our housecleaner charges $20/hour. She reports all of her wages, and we give her a bonus at the end of every year. She is so busy that she can no longer take on new clients and is thinking of hiring an employee.

I sometimes feel uncomfortable with a cleaning person because I am perfectly capable of cleaning the house myself. I hate that I am using a woman in that "traditional" way, and thereby perpetrating the view of a woman as a cleaner.

I agree that I would never hire someone who was not "legal" to work in the States as an employee for a bunch of reasons; some of them ethical and some of them personal.

[Lilian]

OK, it's too late for anyone else to read this, but here you go.

1) Personal take on cleaning people: I come from a country (Brazil) where EVERYONE has hired help at home -- and it's dirt cheap, and not everybody pays their "maids'" social security, taxes, etc. In spite of that, I don't feel comfortable having anyone clean our home. After we got married we lived in Brazil for only 1 1/2 so we didn't need anyone, and even though it's a lot of trouble to keep a decent house (even with the help of a really good in cleaning husband), I don't know if we're going to hire someone.

2) Hispanic vs. Brazilian cleaners: if you don't mind about the legal status of the cleaners (which all of you do, I guess, so my point is moot), I can guarantee you that a work-on-her/his own Brazilian cleaner (even with helpers) will do an outstanding job cleaning your home. Home cleanliness standards in Brazil are very high and, oh, those people can clean. They charge quite a bit too (generally a flat rate per house), that's the main difference between them and their Hispanic counterparts -- those are generally hired by someone else who can speak English and they're often not paid well.

I know many many Brazilian people who make many thousands of dollars a month cleaning houses. In fact, my aunt who's been living legally in this country for almost 30 years and is an American citizen, has been cleaning houses & apts in the D.C. area for 25 years and the compensation is so good she has never been able to let go and found another job [she's one of the cleaning people of Allan Greenspan's home -- his wife's actually -- she's worked there for 20 years I think]. My husband's aunt (also American citizen) was an independent housecleaner as well.

Of course most of them are "undocumented," and I don't really agree with their choice to come here this way, but I just can't just not befriend them just because of that :( I just don't think I'll hire them... A few friends helped me clean the houses during the moving process, and I felt kinda weird about it.

3) *I* did housecleaning for a couple of years when we first moved to this country, as did my SIL who put her husband through graduate school doing that.
I'm not really good in cleaning, so I didn't enjoy it at all, but I guess one can argue that, barred the legality thing, is a job as good as any other...

[aizheng]

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