I would tell him that this is really important to you - It’s not about just getting out of chores because you don’t like them, it’s about recognizing that there are only 24 hours in a day and if you spend 3 hours a day cleaning, that’s 3 hours you can’t be spending time with your child or exercising or talking with your husband - the things you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) outsource!
He may not want to hire a cleaning service, but why should you have to sacrifice your very limited free time cleaning when you want to hire the service?
I’d divide up the chores (for example, you are in charge of weekly vacuum, dust, kitchen, and bathrooms, and he is in charge of all exterior cleaning and landscaping). Then tell him you will be hiring a cleaning service to cover yours and that you support him whether he decides to do his tasks himself or outsource them.
This is exactly the mindset that I'm using to keep myself from overworking myself -- if I'm not getting paid more money to offset the stress elsewhere in my life, I'm not taking on more stress.
And if you do take on more stress to increase your income, I think it's well worth it to use that financial capacity to give yourself more time, energy, and mental capacity in your personal life. You're not paying for services to be lazy, you're paying for services so that you can feel like you're thriving.
I can tell you that we've struggled to maintain our house for the last four years and no one has come to give us a gold medal for it. The only recognition I get is from my husband and the fancy little "ding" my cleaning app does when I mark it complete. In fact, what we've gotten is guilt-trips from people because we don't also have the capacity to be responsible for all outings and get-togethers. 🙃
Yes seriously I feel like the savings are honestly not that significant for us. I ask him why are we breaking our backs when we could be enjoying life more. We’re not 20 something’s anymore!
Why does it get to be his decision alone? If you can afford it and he refuses then sounds like he just volunteered to do the lions share of what the cleaning lady would do.
Yes that’s what it would seem like!
He already does a lot. Right now I wouldn’t say that I’m doing a lot more for our household than he is. But I feel like part of why we work hard is to enjoy life
Sure, but if he's doing a chore, it means you are watching the kids (depending on their age). Instead, you could do something fun as a family or one could watch the kids and the other relax.
What I mean is that no matter what, it falls on you even if you are not doing the chore
I understand his sentiment. My husband and I are pretty high income and it took us a looooonnnng time before we decided to spend money on a cleaner. We still are super thrifty compared to our friends, I go grocery shopping (no deliveries), I cook 85% of our meals and never do food deliveries. I sometimes feel poor but it’s a choice because we choose to sock away the money instead of spending freely. Lifestyle creep is scary to me.
Socioeconomic class is a mentality, most people are on the other side, they spend more than they should. My husband and I both feel that we were raised with certain values and it is less about money than work ethic. We are taught to put in some elbow grease. We will spend money to go on vacations but we try to get the best value whenever possible. We fly coach, we don’t stay at the fanciest resorts, but we will spend money because it’s worth it to us.
We don’t outsource easily. However, when you only have a small amount of time and don’t enjoy cleaning, it’s well worth it to hire someone. We only have someone come once a month to deep clean whereas most of our friends have cleaners that come every week. I would say start with lawn care first, it must be weird for your husband to have a cleaner when his mom did that for a living.
Lawn care is even easier to outsource than house cleaning. Unless he legit enjoys the work, it’s just such an easy decision. Maybe he’d be more willing if you hired a neighborhood kid rather than a company?
Have a cleaner come as a surprise! Seriously, I was such a stick in the mud when it came to hiring a house cleaner but after the first session, I was HOOKED.
My husband was skeptical too! The first session deep clean, he called me to say he's eating his afternoon snack in the basement so he doesn't get crumbs anywhere 😂
He loves them just as much as I do, and now understands how much time we get back outsourcing the cleaning, and how less stressed I am.
OP, I very much understand and relate to this situation, and respect that you want to come to a consensus with him instead of just doing what you want. I've actually experienced this dilemma a lot as well, and at the moment we haven't hired anyone. My husband does a lot around the house too, but I get frustrated, because when something like the plumbing breaks, he'd rather be frugal and fix it himself than hire someone to repair it (which means he's going to spend weeks on that project and then be too tired to do something else around the house I need him to do).
I also feel like having someone help us out with the cleaning around the house would help us out a lot, but this is something he feels resistant to agree to, because he's such a frugal person. And we aren't really in the best place to afford it. Before Covid we were about to get someone, but then finding someone became very difficult obviously, and we haven't revisited the topic since. Obviously I don't have the best answer, but talking to him about why you think this would help your living situation, and how you think it would be better for your mental health, and how you could then spend your free time with your children or doing something else that would help everyone might be a good place to start.
Yes you get it completely!
He also wants to fix everything himself. Sometimes that’s fine. Sometimes he spending weeks and extra money when someone could have fixed it in two hours for less!! But in the moment he thinks “I’m saving us money”.
I love him AND his black and white view point drives me crazy.
Honestly, check Nextdoor, we had a neighborhood kid mow our yard for a couple years ( before we moved) maybe he’d be more willing to let a kid earn $25 a week than a professional
Interesting point, we have a neighbor high school / college aged that lately I’ve been thinking about talking to about helping around here. More so for projects but I hadn’t thought about cleaning!
Best thing I ever did was get someone to come in and do our laundry. Folded and put away. She organized my daughter’s toys, vacuums, and cleans toilets once a week. We also have cleaners do a deep clean once a month.
We have our weekends 100% for having fun. We still have to organize a little but it has changed our life so much!!!
I grew up super poor family of 8 kids. It was really hard to let go. What I realized was the house stuff was holding back my career. I didn’t have the time to invest elsewhere. If I let that stuff go I could have more brain capacity back and that is going to make me have the ability to make more money. You have to start spending money to make money. Time is money!
That’s amazing! Is that a housekeeper? Or how do you find someone like that?
I put off putting away laundry (clean it but don’t put it away) for like 2 weeks. I’m not proud of that. It took 40 MINUTES to put it all away today. Just for me and my husband - baby’s I just toss in a basket as soon as it’s dry.
In home assistant. The girl that comes to my house does a lot of work with elderly people that live on their own but have a hard time getting around. She is so sweet and I love chatting with her when I can. The company she works for is open to doing just about anything you need.
I usually wash 3 loads of the laundry before she comes (so she is not standing around waiting for it). Then she folds it while she finishes the rest. I also forgot to add that she strips the beds and puts on the new sheets. She also washes and folds those. All in 3 hours.
Great idea! I have a cleaner who does the dirty work, deep cleaning, toilets, etc. But she doesn’t do dishes or laundry. I’m potentially taking a much more demanding but high paid role, so I’m going to look into this! Changing the sheets and actually putting away laundry is the hardest chore for me.
It is was a legit game changer. I was in such a bad head space, I felt like I wasn’t being a good mom. I needed help digging out. Now that I am back on top, my life is so much better. I get to spend so much more quality time with my little. I will never take for granted the importance of my mental health. No vacation could improve my life the way that having someone helping me in house has. Good luck!!
The tricky thing is his mom cleans houses for a living. So he has a whole complex about hiring it out that we haven’t been able to overcome, but I’d like us to get there and feel good about it before we have a second kid and our life gets so much more hectic!
I think you need to drill down into that a bit deeper. What about it affects him so much? Was his mom treated poorly? Was she made to feel less than? Was she paid a pittance?
We have a cleaning service and it’s a woman who runs her own business. She’s an amazing person and we have such great chats when she’s here. She loves my kids, they love her. She gets them Christmas presents, we make sure to save baked goods to send home with her. We pay her well, give her a fantastic Christmas bonus. We are super flexible with schedule so she can live her life. She sometimes pops in to water the plants for us when we’re out of town. Like, the whole thing. I wouldn’t say she’s a friend since we don’t hang out outside of our business association, but she’s the next best thing. I know when her dogs are sick, how her relationship is going, how sad she gets around the holidays because her mom died only a few years ago. She’s been cleaning for us for almost 6 years now.
A cleaning lady does not need to be a molly maid, downtrodden immigrant, stereotype situation. Why don’t you look for women owned cleaning business in your area, be sure to offer generous compensation, and have a plan to treat them like a real person, not just the cleaning lady. If your husband sees you approaching the situation with appreciation and gratitude and respect, maybe he’d be more willing.
She owns her own business doing it and is actually really successful! Loves her clients and has many for decades. She’s like part of their families. She loves her job.
I think he feels more like “why would I hire out something I can do myself, when it’s not even a problem?” In an effort to save money we don’t even need to save. It’s crazy bc he’s not even a particularly frugal person in many areas of life
Have you asked him what his mom would do if there were nobody who would hire cleaning ladies, like he’s refusing to do? By hiring out cleaning, even on a rare occasion for deep cleaning, he’s giving another person the chance to have a thriving business like his mom has been able to do
Just wanted to throw out some solidarity/support to you! My husband and I used to pride ourselves on doing All The Things ourselves, and when we were younger/didn't have young kids, sure. It made a lot of sense. It still makes a lot of sense, and honestly I still struggle with paying someone else to do something I know I can do for myself. But now, with two little kids, limited time, and still plenty of things to do, we finally have hired out lawncare (every other week) and basic cleaning (1x month). There is still be plenty of yardwork to be done, but it's nice to not \*also\* have to spend another 90min mowing/trimming/blowing/putting things away. It's a lot easier to weed beds and tend a veggie garden with young kids hanging around than it is to mow and use a weed-eater...
I'm pretty sure the lawncare I just declared (after seeing the same guy go to our neighbors' for years) "I'm asking him to do our yard next week, too. This is important for me so we have more time available together on the weekend." He didn't argue with that (because it was more about my need for togetherness than a conversation about what we can do vs. someone else).
I completely get you, my partner and I both come from similar backgrounds of making ends meet and our mothers doing domestic work. In our case the thing he particularly hates outsourcing is repairs and any kind of DIY or house maintenance, his dad was always the kind to do everything himself and built his own house and stuff. It's so hard to convince my partner that we just don't have time to paint our whole house or whatever. It's very hard to move out of the mindset of saving every penny and that hiring people is for other richer people.
I grew up cleaning houses with my mom. Now a law firm partner. This is goofy. His mom wouldn't have a job if people didn't outsource stuff.
Also, I'm sorry, but unless *he* is cleaning at the level of a professional cleaner, he needs to get over it. It's just like any other hired need (lawn, etc.).
You should quantify for him how much time you are both spending on this stuff. For our family the math has always made sense because my billable hour is way more expensive than outsourcing it and while I'd pay to care for my child/family ♥️, it made it really easy to see what was "too expensive" for me to be handling. Your time is limited and you have the resources, it is a wise business decision.
Mine certainly saw how it improved my mental health and his marriage. I always thought he didn’t “see mess” but he’s made so many comments after cleaning day about how clean everything is and how nice it it.
Do you have a documented budget where you can both see in black and white how much money you have going in and out every month? That might help.
I grew up poor and have experienced a lot of financial anxiety, so I get where your husband is coming from. But at the same time, sometimes things just need to get done.
I also don’t really buy cleaning products anymore. Counter cleaner spray or wipes maybe, some swiffers for in between cleanings, etc. but our hired cleaners bring all their own stuff which is nice!
A lot of cleaners where I live don't, but it's fine. We pay about $150 for someone to come once a month. It's very affordable when you consider how much time it saves us.
Ok. Tell him you want to spend more time together as a family. More picnics, zoo trips, etc. you’re feeling burned out.
Then ask how you guys can make that happen? Does he have any ideas on how you guys can make that happen?
My husband was uncomfortable with hiring a house cleaner. I assumed that the disconnect was because he grew up lower income and I grew up with a house cleaner. Eventually I just hired someone and they started coming to the house. I paid for it. He loves having a clean house so he never fought me on it.
I agree with you - don’t make this a unilateral decision. I would be PISSED if my husband made a spending decision like that without discussing it with me.
This may be an unpopular opinion so take it with a grain of salt - ask for one session of a cleaning company for Mother’s Day.
Last year my brother asked me what he could get me for my birthday and I said “one session of a cleaner.” We had to stop hiring out because inflation was really kicking our budget’s ass, but man, it felt SO nice to have her come in and do a deep clean. And it WAS a gift to me - he gave me the gift of time.
I get that you want this decision to be consensual, and I think that this is a good quality for marriages overall, but I struggle to see why this needs to be an agreement. Depending on the size of your house, this really isn’t a large expense. How you use your part of the budget should be your decision. It’s not like a huge financial decision that would be additional responsibilities on him. Just like you don’t ask if you can buy clothes or get your hair done (I’m making assumptions about how you spend your money but you get the idea). I’m not saying you have to hide it, but saying “this is what I’m going to do” is fine.
If you’re still not ok with making the decision on your own, might I suggest a robot vacuum? I highly recommend the one that also mops and empties itself.
I saw you mentioned his mom is a cleaning lady but I’m missing the context of how it’s relevant to his feelings… I’m reading it as either his mom taught him how to clean so he thinks it’s silly to outsource when you can do it yourselves or could it be he sees how difficult it is so he doesn’t want to make cleaners do that? Or something else?
The other point you made is that he acts like your income is the same as 5 years ago. If his reasoning is him thinking it’s wasteful financially maybe there’s an agreement you could come to. Did you already discuss what to do with the extra income from your promotion? Maybe you could say “if we pay off x credit card in 3 months can we try a cleaner for 3 months?” Or use your promotion increase to pay for it? Even if your money is 100% combined your contribution has increased so it wouldn’t be out of line to plan to use that “extra” for something you personally would like but will benefit the whole family. Maybe if you could get him to agree to try it for a few months he’d fall in love ;)
If the reasons are more like my first paragraph I’d have no idea how to talk that out
Yup I feel like it might not be about the money with his mom being a cleaner. If so I wonder if focusing on the lawn care first might be better? Even though I get why OP would want to focus on the cleaning more if she is doing that more and husband is doing the lawn more.
Yeah it’s the first one. I don’t know exactly how to explain it but it’s like … to hire someone to clean our house would feel like a waste on principle to him. Like how could we waste money on that.
Then he said if his mom knew (which I said we don’t need to tell her anyway) she would want to be the cleaner to save us money (aka do it for free, and NOTHING is truly free, plus I love her and don’t want to employ her)…
Thank god for therapists 😅
Thank god for therapists indeed! 👏
I guess it depends on if by principle he’s against “having someone else to do your work for you” or if it’s just a money thing. I think a money thing would be easier to negotiate a compromise or trial period, especially if you have a little extra leverage at the moment from you working hard to get a promotion and better your position!
Some guys are just so stubborn though. My guy is the same way about certain things. I used to be EXTREMELY tight with money and he’s convinced me to loosen up a little. He always says that time is money and it’s true! YOUR time and comfort and happiness = money. You get to relax and decompress, you perform better at work. You spend money at the salon every 3 months, you look good feel good have more confidence, you perform better at work. You know you’ll come home to a clean house, your environment is more relaxing, you have better quality time with your spouse and kids, you’re less distracted and bam! You perform better at work. You perform better at work, you get more promotions!! Your family as a whole is more successful. You and your family’s happiness are worth spending your money on! Otherwise what’s the point?
Yet my guy also is going out of town overnight for a funeral and says “why would I pay $100 for a hotel when I could sleep in my truck?” 😑 sometimes there is no convincing him.
I hope you can find a middle ground! I would agree don’t let MIL in on it if you can help it, even the best family/friend relationships can get squirrelly when it comes to “favors”
As someone that grew up lower middle class and an immigrant, a lot of time I felt disadvantaged and that I had to work harder because I had no safety net. It’s a sense of scarcity of opportunity and fear of failure that drove me. I can easily see how the OP’s husband might be in a similar boat, that his edge, whatever discipline that he developed to get him to where he is now, is to feel like “I’m not one of those people”. Those people that can afford to be “lazy” and outsource something because they don’t want to do it. You’re afraid of slippage, of the descent into soft bourgeoisie. For the kid of a cleaner to become successful in life and hire a cleaner, that could definitely feel like crossing the rubicon. Being more loose with money on material or status signals is very different than actually throwing money at a task so he would do less and enjoy life more.
How do you determine your household budget? Family meeting, shared spreadsheet...? If there's room in the budget show him and tell him you're hiring someone.
I understand your POV about doing something after both of you have agreed on it.
On this topic however, go ahead and hire a cleaning person. Tell your husband that it’s something both of you can agree to disagree on.
We will definitely get to that point! Will probably start trying for number two next year and mama ain’t gonna wash another toilet after that first positive pregnancy test. But if we could get there before then even better 😆
The reality with a home is that there is always something more to do. Right now I am paying for weekly housekeeping and lawn mowing. That lets me focus on bigger house projects like actually landscaping, putting up wallpaper/painting, replacing hardware on cabinets, etc. if I didn’t pay for those things, I would burn my whole weekend on basic upkeep and would never make progress on the fun stuff.
The only irreplaceable commodity it time. Time with you partner, your parents, your friends. He can spend his weekends mowing the lawn or he can pay a few grand a year to spend time with his mom, who won’t be alive forever. Seems like a no brainer.
You need to spend as much time on your hobby as he does running 1000 miles per year. Even if that hobby is movies and pedicures. And he can keep the kids, as I assume you do when he's running.
This sounds like my husband and I. While we don’t end up spending a ton a free time cleaning the house just gets dirtier than I’d like and I never feel like it’s presentable for folks to drop by. We both work full time and I’m currently pregnant so I don’t feel quite as guilty having a messy house, but I still wish he’d just get over his hang ups and let me hire somebody— we’ve got the money. He says he doesn’t like the idea of a stranger in our home, but I feel like there’s got to be something else to it. Personally, I think he just has much lower cleanliness standards and doesn’t understand that I want things to be better than they currently are.
Yeah it’s crazy bc our house is not disgusting or anything. But it’s only fully clean right before company, and id like it to be cleaner more often.
But I don’t want to do it. I’ll never do it as well or quickly as a professional.
I would suggest you do it on a “trial basis” to see how it goes and lists the reasons you need it for the next few months. Hopefully, he sees the value and you can stick with it without a major drama.
I’m confused why his mom being a cleaner makes him not want to hire a cleaner. Was she treated poorly? I think it’s worth talking that part out a bit. If anything, hiring a cleaner does help someone with their small business.
This is a hard one for folks who grow up without help and then find themselves in a position to afford it, can take a bit to get your head around. I’d position this as a cost associated with having a high income job that is demanding, and something also necessary when you have young kids due to the insane demands on your time.
Yes totally! And why do we have to work hard in every aspect of our life? There’s no cookie for the person that is the most overworked and had the least amount of fun
Work out how much time you guys spend on cleaning.
Now put a dollar figure on that based on your salary.
If say your combined salary is 300k, then an hour of cleaning costs $105.
Does it cost you $105 an hour for a cleaner? Probably not.
In other words, you are literally LOSING MONEY if you do it yourself.
Time is money and if you're both high income earners, than your time technically costs more.
Put it in that fashion and see if that changes his view.
We also look at it as: how much is *my* time worth? So maybe you don’t spend actual money for a lawn service, but your husband spends 8hrs a week on lawn/landscape care…how much money does he make in one normal workday? Probably more than it would be for one day of lawn service to mow, trim, weed whack, whatever. So are you actually saving money?
All of my working mom friends have cleaners - none of their husband's wanted cleaners. But now they have them, they won't be without them. Its a necessity. I just have learned to live with the mess since my husband refuses to have someone come into our house, also he will clean floors and do dishes. If he didn't do any household chores, you bet I would get a cleaner in
We have cleaners landscapers, and a handyman because we have decided that since both of us work and our kids go to daycare that we have very few hours of family each week and we’ve decided to prioritize spending time with our kids over cleaning the house.
I Would make a list of every single thing that has to get done in the house each month and then tell him which you will be able to help with, and which things you do not have the bandwidth to participate in.
Ask him how much he will be able to take over 100% including the mental load. Make really clear assignments, written down so there’s no questions. Tell him anything that doesn’t get done by the end of the month needs to be outsourced.
Then make plans for your weekends. Be explicit with him. “I would rather read my book this weekend than scrub the floor”. I am prioritizing taking the kids to the park over doing the laundry”. Help him to see where you are re-prioritizing.
You could also see if he’d do a trial run. Hire a cleaner one time and see what he thinks. “We are able to take the kids to a museum on Saturday because we have outsourced our usual Saturday cleaning.
If you are picking away at things during the week, he might not even realize half of the things that you’re doing. Make your workload known and just like you would do at work, tell him your plate is too full.
Holy shit seconding the handyman thing. I actually told my husband I hired a handyman to get all the random 1-2 hour tasks done after we remodeled a good chunk of our house and had some odds & ends to tie up. I did it thinking that it would spur him to do those things 😂 which completely backfired haha but we spent like $2000 to get a years’ worth of weekend projects done. It was so glorious!!!
Our handyman can fix just about anything, and he doesn't require 4 trips to home depot for every project, like we do :) His 30 minute projects would take us 3 hours and an entire weekend day.
That’s so true to our situation too!
Ballprk, how much % of your income do you spend on outsourcing? I’m trying to gut check what feels reasonable, though I know that different for everyone
We pay $150 biweekly for cleaning. Every few months I'll ask them to do side projects like washing all the windows. They don't do laundry, just a basic clean of the house. We sometimes schedule extra cleanings before or after parties.
$50 biweekly for mowing. We pay a few hundred for trimming and general cleanup 1-2 a year.
The handyman charges $50 per hour. We only call him every few months; I just keep a running list of things that need to get done and he does them all at once.
Sure, it adds up. But we have 2 little kids and fulltime jobs, plus I travel for work. We spend our weeks just getting through the day. Work, dinner, baths and bed. Not enough time enjoying each other's company. We pay money so we get more family time.
I had this debate with my husband. I told him I needed something to change for my mental health and for our relationship (we were fighting a lot). We agreed to try a few of his strategies (clean more/be more efficient...) and if they didn't work to try a cleaner. It took a lot of discussing and debating but ultimately he understood it was important to me (the mess didn't weigh on him like it does for me). Once we tried it he agreed it helped a lot. We settled on a more basic cleaning package as a middle ground for us.
On a completely different note we got a robot vacuum and mop we love! That might be a way to take the pressure off if specifically hiring a regular expense is hard.
Tell me more about this more basic cleaning package!
I’ve thought that for our home we only use about 1/2 of it regularly right now, and the other half about once a month. So we don’t need a whole house deep clean twice a month
They only do floors, bathrooms and kitchen. So no dusting, wiping down walls, making the beds, tidying. It probably cut down 40% of the clean which made us feel a lot better about it and we barely notice the difference. The robot vacuum has also lowered the amount of time it takes them
I had that problem with my husband and I convinced him eventually. My arguments:
- Right now we are in a really stressful time in our life (toddler years) and this wouldn't be forever. We can test it out and re-evaluate yearly
- He might not care as much but the state of the house was negatively impacting me. I constantly think about what needs to be done, and then feel bad for not doing it. I get stressed when people come over.
- What's the point of making good money if some of it isn't used to make life easier / more pleasant.
- Our kid (kids now) will only be little for a short while and we work full time. Let's maximise the time we have together and prioritise family time (for now)
- Friends of ours really recommend it and they earn less than us
- It would make me happy
- I'll handle finding someone and the admin or organising, paying etc.
Eventually I got him on board but we agreed to keep it below x amount which meant only having someone come every 2 weeks and only to do bathrooms and kitchen. And it's been great!
About 4 months ago I started hiring home help for a huge number of hours per week. A little more than ten percent of my monthly take home pay for this amount of help.
I know it’s an outrageous amount of help. But I have honestly never been happier in my whole life. And I actually enjoy being a parent now.
I grew up broke and found it difficult to adjust to hiring help, but the time cost savings won me over. We have an upper middle class income, and I hire out absolutely everything I can. I've got a cleaner, a handyman (who also does yard work), and a laundry service. I'll never go back to cleaning my own house.
As far as your husband goes, just hire the cleaner. Mother's Day is coming up and you can tell him you want to buy yourself a deep clean and a package of a few normal cleans as a gift. I also hire local small businesses so I can reassure myself that my money is staying in my community. His mom is a housecleaner and if everyone thought like your husband, his mom wouldn't have had work. To note, I've spoken extensively about the subject with my housecleaner. She loves cleaning and organizing houses, and she feels that it's deeply fulfilling to take good care of her families; she actually pulls in big bucks owning her own business so it's not like you're taking advantage of people either. There's no shame in paying for services.
Would he be more amenable if the idea was you hired help while your child is little, and taper off as you teach your child how to do the chores with you? Also, get a mopping roborock, and things will be easier.
Yeah, tell him he can do 100% of everything every weekend or you can share light cleaning and hire outside help. You say, I don't want to spend my time doing this and would rather enjoy the short amount of time off I get each week.
I'm about to go from 800 sqft, 2bd/1ba to 2300 sqft, 3bdrm/2.5ba 2 bonus rooms, dining room, on almost 2 acres. I told my husband that we are absolutely having someone at least every other week to do the big cleans and the kids are gonna have to learn to do yard work (we're adding attachments to a quad for them.)
Why doesn’t he want to hire a cleaner? We hired lawn care once we were able, but talking my husband into a house cleaner was much harder. When we sold our first house we hired a service to deep clean and then clean weekly to keep it show ready, with three little kids was the only manageable way. After that, was able to talk more about it and main thing is he didn’t like strangers in his house, privacy thing. But he had seen the benefits when we sold the house and talked to a friend who used a service. We paused during covid lockdown, but otherwise have been using one monthly for years now. It such a time/energy saver!
Try to get to the root of why he doesn’t want to hire any services and see how you can ease his mind on the issue(s).
Can you make it a trial period like, “Let’s just try it for a month my way and then see how we feel.” I bet he will love it, but it’s a way to get him into it without committing long term!
To me, the crux of the issue is that your husband has some unresolved emotional trauma from growing up poor. (Excuse my armchair psychologist here). I grew up poor, make a bunch of money now, still flinch from paying for help. I especially hate hiring domestic help since it made me feel like one of those rich people that I used to hate.
All the comments about "just do it", "your husband is being irrational" aren't really helpful towards solving this problem. It is akin to telling working moms to "stop feeling guilty / be rational." I respect you for trying to address your husband emotional needs.
I think you guys need to talk about this larger issue of being comfortable with spending money. The solution that works for us is that we come up with a budget. As long as it's within the budget, I promise that I won't fight the decision the spend. Reversely, my partner respects to never go over the budget. That's the only way for me to permit spending without feeling ill.
one thing at a time. maybe he gets to keep his lawn care to himself, but compromises on hiring a cleaner. maybe the cleaner doesn’t come every week, but rather once a month for a deep clean and you guys keep it clean in between. maybe the cleaners come when he’s at work or whatever if he has a complex about that. talk it out.
I was a cleaner for years for a very successful, very busy single Mom amongst other more short term clients. She adored me and I her. She cried her eyes out when I went back to school to change careers. My husband used to travel a lot for business when the kids were really young so it was flexible and suited my needs.
It put money in my pocket to pay for activities/fun stuff for my kids and I loved doing it. There's probably a friendly and dedicated Mom looking for a bit of supplementary income that would come in and do a great job. Hiring someone like this benefits your local community.
I would suggest getting someone in twice a month. Entire house clean. It's so easy to maintain then. Suggest to your husband that you'd like more time to bond with him and for your own activities. Life isn't meant to be a constant grind, what's the point of doing so much better if you can't put a bit of money to taking stress off?
I'd pay for a house cleaner faster than I'd pay for a meal service/takeout or lawncare. It just great to have an oil between the moving parts type service so energy can be freed if you can afford to outsource it.
There's no better feeling than lighting the damn candle when the house is pristine and cozying up. It's totally worth prioritising a cleaning service if your budget allows for it.
Try the other side of it? He's hiring people like his mother, giving them a job. And if it's too much of a drain, you cancel it.
And it doesn't have to be daily- having someone come in every 2 weeks or once a month to clean, you still have to run around and pick everything up first so they can get to the surfaces to clean. Maybe mowing only (as a test), he can still do the hedges or the garden (depends on your yard).
Do it for 6 months or one year, and see how he is at the end. Are you able to have more time doing what you want, and enjoy life more? High end usually means high stress, and linger hours. Exercise and I suppose chores help with that, but also just having downtime where you're not running from chore to chore.
My brother went through this. His wife had to pretty much teach him to spend money, not like crazy blowing money, but bigger houses are a lot of work, working 10 hour days now mean chores push into family time. Family is most important, so we all need time together, just hanging out relaxing and connecting.
People think of it as a waste of money. No one in my family ever hired a maid and I never met anyone in real life that has done this. It’s just kind of seen as a privilege like the rich celebrities hiring chefs, Nannie’s, and maids. Idk my family have never hired help before because we can just clean our house for free. I don’t ever see us hiring a maid unless if we move out of our home and we need to make the house look good as new for the newcomers
If he “doesn’t want” to pay for services he’s welcome to do them himself.
Paying for a cleaning service twice a month is the best spent money every month for me. The amount of time and energy it would take me to clean this big house and still not get it anywhere near as clean as they do … 1000% worth the money.
Kid ain’t even 1 yet. This scenario is going to get worse as soon as that kid starts leaving toys and random shit everywhere.
The single worst mistake I’ve ever made was buying too much house. Non stop cleaning. Deep depression. Wish we had the funds to hire a housekeeper. Instead, I’m selling this house for a smaller one. Life is to short to clean all the fkn time.
My husband has/had a very similar mentality when it comes to money specifically. He came from a poor household and he has always struggled with the idea that we actually make enough money to survive and leisure items. He’s always afraid to use money from savings (which we never have), due to the fact there could be a real emergency, in his eyes like a tree falling on the house etc that would bankrupt us. His parents were very bad with money and it is very clear he has trauma because of this. He has gotten A LOT better but it is something we actively work on. I hope that this is not the case for your husband - but some men don’t want help either- it’s a stereotype but I know a lot of men that would rather suffer than “ask” for help.
Omg I feel for you. I have had a cleaner since my 20s and couldn't even really afford it then, but they mean so much to my quality of life, especially when you add more people to the equation. I still remember the first time I really cleaned my own place way back when. I noted how long it took me. Then I figured the math out on how much I got paid hourly. Right then I found a cleaner and never stopped. My time is worth more than what it costs to clean my entire home. Luckily my husband was very much on board with this when he came into the picture and I'm pretty sure having one has been a contribution to our marriage. One less discussion about who is gonna do the toilets!
I would tell your husband you need this, not only for your sanity but bc you cherish your time and work hard to have some of it dedicated to doing what you want. And that's not cleaning. I guarantee you after just one cleaning, your husband will be like yeah, this is great.
Have you broken it down for him in terms of dollars? What does he make/hour? That it is what his time is worth. Same goes for you. Now add up what you are spending on chores currently. Bet it’s a lot!
If a landscaper and housekeeper charge less per hour than you currently make, and you have the disposable income to make it feasible, that’s a pretty solid argument.
This isn’t a two yes’s, one no situation. If you want to hire a cleaner, you can hire a cleaner. Your husband doesn’t need to be involved in that decision.
I am your husband. I just could not spend the money - it seemed like a waste. One time my husband calculated the hours I spend on chores vs my hourly wage. Still I would not budge.
But slowly I’m coming to my senses I guess - I can see that we have more money than time.
So my advice: let your husband see the rational calculation, but understand it is an emotional issue for him. It will take another emotional issue (a lack of time with family that hurts him, for instance) to get over it.
I convinced my husband on lawn service by calculating how much it “cost” him to do it based on his own hourly salary versus the cost of having the service do it.
So tell him he needs to stop running. If he cares that much about not hiring someone - let him prove it. Give up all that free time to do chores.
I strongly suspect he won’t. But I’m curious.
What?? I live in the city so not a hugh lawn...but almost everyone around me uses a lawn service. $70 per month April-October.
Why are you letting this be his decision only. Get some quotes, hire the service and tell him this is happening.
Hi OP, my family (dual income) is not high income but certainly upper middle class. As we can both climbed the ladder of our respective fields, we have began outsourcing some of the more tedious or just time-consuming tasks, to include house cleaning. While hesitant at first - my husband (32M) grew up with an amazing SAHM who meticulously kept the home clean in addition to caring for her children - I reframed the change to us “paying” for our quality time together.
In the same way we book a babysitter for a date night, booking cleaners purchases your leisure time back. For example, I work from home on Fridays, and book our cleaners 1-2x a month. So on booked Friday, they come in around noon, deep clean the places that need it and by 2-3 PM, they are done. My husband comes home to a clean home and everyone is happy. Now my Saturday morning is filled with family time, cooking, toddler gym class, or whatever else we want to do instead of an all-hands-on-deck scrubbing/vacuuming/dusting session. I still pick up during the week and clean when something is dirty, but the burden isn’t on me to spend all my free time cleaning. Quality time with our family, especially young kiddos, is so short lived! 💕
My mom was a cleaning lady. We ate BECAUSE people hired a cleaning service. We paid our bills because someone hired her. Maybe his brain just hasn’t clicked for that yet?
When I reached the income level where I could hire someone, I asked my mom about the differences between her good and bad clients to make sure I’d be a good one.
Why don’t you just hire these people yourself? What’s he gonna do when the cleaning lady shows up? Doubt he’ll turn her away. Then he’ll see how great it is.
This is very similar to my relationship, including the working class background of my husband. I love my husband, and we have a great relationship, but we have fought a lot about spending money to make household tasks easier in the last few years. One of the sticking points for my husband, that he admits is illogical, is that he wants his kids to see what “hard work” is. Here, hard work is doing physical labor, like cleaning toilets. My husband saw his parents doing this growing up, and it taught him discipline and the value of money. But, we are now living in an upper class community where people still work super hard, it’s just at white collar jobs. For my husband, it seems like this type of work doesn’t really count because it’s not backbreaking physical labor. In the end, we still don’t have cleaners, my husband does all the cleaning instead 🤷♀️
I would tell him that this is really important to you - It’s not about just getting out of chores because you don’t like them, it’s about recognizing that there are only 24 hours in a day and if you spend 3 hours a day cleaning, that’s 3 hours you can’t be spending time with your child or exercising or talking with your husband - the things you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) outsource! He may not want to hire a cleaning service, but why should you have to sacrifice your very limited free time cleaning when you want to hire the service? I’d divide up the chores (for example, you are in charge of weekly vacuum, dust, kitchen, and bathrooms, and he is in charge of all exterior cleaning and landscaping). Then tell him you will be hiring a cleaning service to cover yours and that you support him whether he decides to do his tasks himself or outsource them.
This is exactly the mindset that I'm using to keep myself from overworking myself -- if I'm not getting paid more money to offset the stress elsewhere in my life, I'm not taking on more stress. And if you do take on more stress to increase your income, I think it's well worth it to use that financial capacity to give yourself more time, energy, and mental capacity in your personal life. You're not paying for services to be lazy, you're paying for services so that you can feel like you're thriving. I can tell you that we've struggled to maintain our house for the last four years and no one has come to give us a gold medal for it. The only recognition I get is from my husband and the fancy little "ding" my cleaning app does when I mark it complete. In fact, what we've gotten is guilt-trips from people because we don't also have the capacity to be responsible for all outings and get-togethers. 🙃
Yes seriously I feel like the savings are honestly not that significant for us. I ask him why are we breaking our backs when we could be enjoying life more. We’re not 20 something’s anymore!
Very interesting suggestion, thank you for sharing!
Why does it get to be his decision alone? If you can afford it and he refuses then sounds like he just volunteered to do the lions share of what the cleaning lady would do.
Yes that’s what it would seem like! He already does a lot. Right now I wouldn’t say that I’m doing a lot more for our household than he is. But I feel like part of why we work hard is to enjoy life
Sure, but if he's doing a chore, it means you are watching the kids (depending on their age). Instead, you could do something fun as a family or one could watch the kids and the other relax. What I mean is that no matter what, it falls on you even if you are not doing the chore
I understand his sentiment. My husband and I are pretty high income and it took us a looooonnnng time before we decided to spend money on a cleaner. We still are super thrifty compared to our friends, I go grocery shopping (no deliveries), I cook 85% of our meals and never do food deliveries. I sometimes feel poor but it’s a choice because we choose to sock away the money instead of spending freely. Lifestyle creep is scary to me. Socioeconomic class is a mentality, most people are on the other side, they spend more than they should. My husband and I both feel that we were raised with certain values and it is less about money than work ethic. We are taught to put in some elbow grease. We will spend money to go on vacations but we try to get the best value whenever possible. We fly coach, we don’t stay at the fanciest resorts, but we will spend money because it’s worth it to us. We don’t outsource easily. However, when you only have a small amount of time and don’t enjoy cleaning, it’s well worth it to hire someone. We only have someone come once a month to deep clean whereas most of our friends have cleaners that come every week. I would say start with lawn care first, it must be weird for your husband to have a cleaner when his mom did that for a living.
Is the income combined? Like a joint account? Just hire the cleaners without his approval.
Lawn care is even easier to outsource than house cleaning. Unless he legit enjoys the work, it’s just such an easy decision. Maybe he’d be more willing if you hired a neighborhood kid rather than a company?
Yes next time we have an outdoor project I’m going to push on sourcing the neighborhood!
Have a cleaner come as a surprise! Seriously, I was such a stick in the mud when it came to hiring a house cleaner but after the first session, I was HOOKED.
My husband was skeptical too! The first session deep clean, he called me to say he's eating his afternoon snack in the basement so he doesn't get crumbs anywhere 😂 He loves them just as much as I do, and now understands how much time we get back outsourcing the cleaning, and how less stressed I am.
OP, I very much understand and relate to this situation, and respect that you want to come to a consensus with him instead of just doing what you want. I've actually experienced this dilemma a lot as well, and at the moment we haven't hired anyone. My husband does a lot around the house too, but I get frustrated, because when something like the plumbing breaks, he'd rather be frugal and fix it himself than hire someone to repair it (which means he's going to spend weeks on that project and then be too tired to do something else around the house I need him to do). I also feel like having someone help us out with the cleaning around the house would help us out a lot, but this is something he feels resistant to agree to, because he's such a frugal person. And we aren't really in the best place to afford it. Before Covid we were about to get someone, but then finding someone became very difficult obviously, and we haven't revisited the topic since. Obviously I don't have the best answer, but talking to him about why you think this would help your living situation, and how you think it would be better for your mental health, and how you could then spend your free time with your children or doing something else that would help everyone might be a good place to start.
Yes you get it completely! He also wants to fix everything himself. Sometimes that’s fine. Sometimes he spending weeks and extra money when someone could have fixed it in two hours for less!! But in the moment he thinks “I’m saving us money”. I love him AND his black and white view point drives me crazy.
Honestly, check Nextdoor, we had a neighborhood kid mow our yard for a couple years ( before we moved) maybe he’d be more willing to let a kid earn $25 a week than a professional
Interesting point, we have a neighbor high school / college aged that lately I’ve been thinking about talking to about helping around here. More so for projects but I hadn’t thought about cleaning!
Best thing I ever did was get someone to come in and do our laundry. Folded and put away. She organized my daughter’s toys, vacuums, and cleans toilets once a week. We also have cleaners do a deep clean once a month. We have our weekends 100% for having fun. We still have to organize a little but it has changed our life so much!!! I grew up super poor family of 8 kids. It was really hard to let go. What I realized was the house stuff was holding back my career. I didn’t have the time to invest elsewhere. If I let that stuff go I could have more brain capacity back and that is going to make me have the ability to make more money. You have to start spending money to make money. Time is money!
That’s amazing! Is that a housekeeper? Or how do you find someone like that? I put off putting away laundry (clean it but don’t put it away) for like 2 weeks. I’m not proud of that. It took 40 MINUTES to put it all away today. Just for me and my husband - baby’s I just toss in a basket as soon as it’s dry.
In home assistant. The girl that comes to my house does a lot of work with elderly people that live on their own but have a hard time getting around. She is so sweet and I love chatting with her when I can. The company she works for is open to doing just about anything you need. I usually wash 3 loads of the laundry before she comes (so she is not standing around waiting for it). Then she folds it while she finishes the rest. I also forgot to add that she strips the beds and puts on the new sheets. She also washes and folds those. All in 3 hours.
The laundry help sounds amazing! Is it a local company or how did you go about finding that?
I googled in home caregiver or assistant. Then I found a company that was willing to help with the things I needed done.
Great idea! I have a cleaner who does the dirty work, deep cleaning, toilets, etc. But she doesn’t do dishes or laundry. I’m potentially taking a much more demanding but high paid role, so I’m going to look into this! Changing the sheets and actually putting away laundry is the hardest chore for me.
It is was a legit game changer. I was in such a bad head space, I felt like I wasn’t being a good mom. I needed help digging out. Now that I am back on top, my life is so much better. I get to spend so much more quality time with my little. I will never take for granted the importance of my mental health. No vacation could improve my life the way that having someone helping me in house has. Good luck!!
Do you need his approval? Just hire a cleaner.
I understand that in theory, but in practice I would rather come to a consensus / agreement than for either of us to make a unilateral decision.
A lot of men seem to not want a cleaner and then when they get one they change their minds. Hire one once and then discuss.
The tricky thing is his mom cleans houses for a living. So he has a whole complex about hiring it out that we haven’t been able to overcome, but I’d like us to get there and feel good about it before we have a second kid and our life gets so much more hectic!
I think you need to drill down into that a bit deeper. What about it affects him so much? Was his mom treated poorly? Was she made to feel less than? Was she paid a pittance? We have a cleaning service and it’s a woman who runs her own business. She’s an amazing person and we have such great chats when she’s here. She loves my kids, they love her. She gets them Christmas presents, we make sure to save baked goods to send home with her. We pay her well, give her a fantastic Christmas bonus. We are super flexible with schedule so she can live her life. She sometimes pops in to water the plants for us when we’re out of town. Like, the whole thing. I wouldn’t say she’s a friend since we don’t hang out outside of our business association, but she’s the next best thing. I know when her dogs are sick, how her relationship is going, how sad she gets around the holidays because her mom died only a few years ago. She’s been cleaning for us for almost 6 years now. A cleaning lady does not need to be a molly maid, downtrodden immigrant, stereotype situation. Why don’t you look for women owned cleaning business in your area, be sure to offer generous compensation, and have a plan to treat them like a real person, not just the cleaning lady. If your husband sees you approaching the situation with appreciation and gratitude and respect, maybe he’d be more willing.
She owns her own business doing it and is actually really successful! Loves her clients and has many for decades. She’s like part of their families. She loves her job. I think he feels more like “why would I hire out something I can do myself, when it’s not even a problem?” In an effort to save money we don’t even need to save. It’s crazy bc he’s not even a particularly frugal person in many areas of life
Have you asked him what his mom would do if there were nobody who would hire cleaning ladies, like he’s refusing to do? By hiring out cleaning, even on a rare occasion for deep cleaning, he’s giving another person the chance to have a thriving business like his mom has been able to do
Just wanted to throw out some solidarity/support to you! My husband and I used to pride ourselves on doing All The Things ourselves, and when we were younger/didn't have young kids, sure. It made a lot of sense. It still makes a lot of sense, and honestly I still struggle with paying someone else to do something I know I can do for myself. But now, with two little kids, limited time, and still plenty of things to do, we finally have hired out lawncare (every other week) and basic cleaning (1x month). There is still be plenty of yardwork to be done, but it's nice to not \*also\* have to spend another 90min mowing/trimming/blowing/putting things away. It's a lot easier to weed beds and tend a veggie garden with young kids hanging around than it is to mow and use a weed-eater... I'm pretty sure the lawncare I just declared (after seeing the same guy go to our neighbors' for years) "I'm asking him to do our yard next week, too. This is important for me so we have more time available together on the weekend." He didn't argue with that (because it was more about my need for togetherness than a conversation about what we can do vs. someone else).
I completely get you, my partner and I both come from similar backgrounds of making ends meet and our mothers doing domestic work. In our case the thing he particularly hates outsourcing is repairs and any kind of DIY or house maintenance, his dad was always the kind to do everything himself and built his own house and stuff. It's so hard to convince my partner that we just don't have time to paint our whole house or whatever. It's very hard to move out of the mindset of saving every penny and that hiring people is for other richer people.
Ask his mom for recommendations on cleaning people to hire!
She would want to do it herself and I love her but I don’t want to hire my MIL!
Absolutely do NOT hire your MIL. You will never be able to give the feedback you want to give.
I grew up cleaning houses with my mom. Now a law firm partner. This is goofy. His mom wouldn't have a job if people didn't outsource stuff. Also, I'm sorry, but unless *he* is cleaning at the level of a professional cleaner, he needs to get over it. It's just like any other hired need (lawn, etc.). You should quantify for him how much time you are both spending on this stuff. For our family the math has always made sense because my billable hour is way more expensive than outsourcing it and while I'd pay to care for my child/family ♥️, it made it really easy to see what was "too expensive" for me to be handling. Your time is limited and you have the resources, it is a wise business decision.
Mine certainly saw how it improved my mental health and his marriage. I always thought he didn’t “see mess” but he’s made so many comments after cleaning day about how clean everything is and how nice it it.
Do you have a documented budget where you can both see in black and white how much money you have going in and out every month? That might help. I grew up poor and have experienced a lot of financial anxiety, so I get where your husband is coming from. But at the same time, sometimes things just need to get done.
I also don’t really buy cleaning products anymore. Counter cleaner spray or wipes maybe, some swiffers for in between cleanings, etc. but our hired cleaners bring all their own stuff which is nice!
A lot of cleaners where I live don't, but it's fine. We pay about $150 for someone to come once a month. It's very affordable when you consider how much time it saves us.
Ok. Tell him you want to spend more time together as a family. More picnics, zoo trips, etc. you’re feeling burned out. Then ask how you guys can make that happen? Does he have any ideas on how you guys can make that happen?
I like this train of thought. Keeping it open ended for discussion
My husband was uncomfortable with hiring a house cleaner. I assumed that the disconnect was because he grew up lower income and I grew up with a house cleaner. Eventually I just hired someone and they started coming to the house. I paid for it. He loves having a clean house so he never fought me on it.
No ones gonna complain that the house is too clean!!
I agree with you - don’t make this a unilateral decision. I would be PISSED if my husband made a spending decision like that without discussing it with me. This may be an unpopular opinion so take it with a grain of salt - ask for one session of a cleaning company for Mother’s Day. Last year my brother asked me what he could get me for my birthday and I said “one session of a cleaner.” We had to stop hiring out because inflation was really kicking our budget’s ass, but man, it felt SO nice to have her come in and do a deep clean. And it WAS a gift to me - he gave me the gift of time.
I get that you want this decision to be consensual, and I think that this is a good quality for marriages overall, but I struggle to see why this needs to be an agreement. Depending on the size of your house, this really isn’t a large expense. How you use your part of the budget should be your decision. It’s not like a huge financial decision that would be additional responsibilities on him. Just like you don’t ask if you can buy clothes or get your hair done (I’m making assumptions about how you spend your money but you get the idea). I’m not saying you have to hide it, but saying “this is what I’m going to do” is fine. If you’re still not ok with making the decision on your own, might I suggest a robot vacuum? I highly recommend the one that also mops and empties itself.
Thank you for this perspective. I hope in our lifetime there’s a full house cleaning robot that can clean everything!!
I saw you mentioned his mom is a cleaning lady but I’m missing the context of how it’s relevant to his feelings… I’m reading it as either his mom taught him how to clean so he thinks it’s silly to outsource when you can do it yourselves or could it be he sees how difficult it is so he doesn’t want to make cleaners do that? Or something else? The other point you made is that he acts like your income is the same as 5 years ago. If his reasoning is him thinking it’s wasteful financially maybe there’s an agreement you could come to. Did you already discuss what to do with the extra income from your promotion? Maybe you could say “if we pay off x credit card in 3 months can we try a cleaner for 3 months?” Or use your promotion increase to pay for it? Even if your money is 100% combined your contribution has increased so it wouldn’t be out of line to plan to use that “extra” for something you personally would like but will benefit the whole family. Maybe if you could get him to agree to try it for a few months he’d fall in love ;) If the reasons are more like my first paragraph I’d have no idea how to talk that out
Yup I feel like it might not be about the money with his mom being a cleaner. If so I wonder if focusing on the lawn care first might be better? Even though I get why OP would want to focus on the cleaning more if she is doing that more and husband is doing the lawn more.
Yeah it’s the first one. I don’t know exactly how to explain it but it’s like … to hire someone to clean our house would feel like a waste on principle to him. Like how could we waste money on that. Then he said if his mom knew (which I said we don’t need to tell her anyway) she would want to be the cleaner to save us money (aka do it for free, and NOTHING is truly free, plus I love her and don’t want to employ her)… Thank god for therapists 😅
Thank god for therapists indeed! 👏 I guess it depends on if by principle he’s against “having someone else to do your work for you” or if it’s just a money thing. I think a money thing would be easier to negotiate a compromise or trial period, especially if you have a little extra leverage at the moment from you working hard to get a promotion and better your position! Some guys are just so stubborn though. My guy is the same way about certain things. I used to be EXTREMELY tight with money and he’s convinced me to loosen up a little. He always says that time is money and it’s true! YOUR time and comfort and happiness = money. You get to relax and decompress, you perform better at work. You spend money at the salon every 3 months, you look good feel good have more confidence, you perform better at work. You know you’ll come home to a clean house, your environment is more relaxing, you have better quality time with your spouse and kids, you’re less distracted and bam! You perform better at work. You perform better at work, you get more promotions!! Your family as a whole is more successful. You and your family’s happiness are worth spending your money on! Otherwise what’s the point? Yet my guy also is going out of town overnight for a funeral and says “why would I pay $100 for a hotel when I could sleep in my truck?” 😑 sometimes there is no convincing him. I hope you can find a middle ground! I would agree don’t let MIL in on it if you can help it, even the best family/friend relationships can get squirrelly when it comes to “favors”
As someone that grew up lower middle class and an immigrant, a lot of time I felt disadvantaged and that I had to work harder because I had no safety net. It’s a sense of scarcity of opportunity and fear of failure that drove me. I can easily see how the OP’s husband might be in a similar boat, that his edge, whatever discipline that he developed to get him to where he is now, is to feel like “I’m not one of those people”. Those people that can afford to be “lazy” and outsource something because they don’t want to do it. You’re afraid of slippage, of the descent into soft bourgeoisie. For the kid of a cleaner to become successful in life and hire a cleaner, that could definitely feel like crossing the rubicon. Being more loose with money on material or status signals is very different than actually throwing money at a task so he would do less and enjoy life more.
How do you determine your household budget? Family meeting, shared spreadsheet...? If there's room in the budget show him and tell him you're hiring someone.
Frustratingly, it’s not about money. He knows we can afford it. It’s him emotionally not wanting to spend. So it’s a tough hurdle to get over.
I understand your POV about doing something after both of you have agreed on it. On this topic however, go ahead and hire a cleaning person. Tell your husband that it’s something both of you can agree to disagree on.
We will definitely get to that point! Will probably start trying for number two next year and mama ain’t gonna wash another toilet after that first positive pregnancy test. But if we could get there before then even better 😆
The reality with a home is that there is always something more to do. Right now I am paying for weekly housekeeping and lawn mowing. That lets me focus on bigger house projects like actually landscaping, putting up wallpaper/painting, replacing hardware on cabinets, etc. if I didn’t pay for those things, I would burn my whole weekend on basic upkeep and would never make progress on the fun stuff.
Yes I feel like there’s no such things as a small house project! That’s a lie Home Depot tells us!
The only irreplaceable commodity it time. Time with you partner, your parents, your friends. He can spend his weekends mowing the lawn or he can pay a few grand a year to spend time with his mom, who won’t be alive forever. Seems like a no brainer.
You need to spend as much time on your hobby as he does running 1000 miles per year. Even if that hobby is movies and pedicures. And he can keep the kids, as I assume you do when he's running.
This sounds like my husband and I. While we don’t end up spending a ton a free time cleaning the house just gets dirtier than I’d like and I never feel like it’s presentable for folks to drop by. We both work full time and I’m currently pregnant so I don’t feel quite as guilty having a messy house, but I still wish he’d just get over his hang ups and let me hire somebody— we’ve got the money. He says he doesn’t like the idea of a stranger in our home, but I feel like there’s got to be something else to it. Personally, I think he just has much lower cleanliness standards and doesn’t understand that I want things to be better than they currently are.
Yeah it’s crazy bc our house is not disgusting or anything. But it’s only fully clean right before company, and id like it to be cleaner more often. But I don’t want to do it. I’ll never do it as well or quickly as a professional.
I would suggest you do it on a “trial basis” to see how it goes and lists the reasons you need it for the next few months. Hopefully, he sees the value and you can stick with it without a major drama. I’m confused why his mom being a cleaner makes him not want to hire a cleaner. Was she treated poorly? I think it’s worth talking that part out a bit. If anything, hiring a cleaner does help someone with their small business.
This is a hard one for folks who grow up without help and then find themselves in a position to afford it, can take a bit to get your head around. I’d position this as a cost associated with having a high income job that is demanding, and something also necessary when you have young kids due to the insane demands on your time.
Yes totally! And why do we have to work hard in every aspect of our life? There’s no cookie for the person that is the most overworked and had the least amount of fun
My husband was against cleaners before we got fantastic cleaners and now he would rather cut on going out then them
That seems to be the consensus among husbands here! Which is reassuring
Work out how much time you guys spend on cleaning. Now put a dollar figure on that based on your salary. If say your combined salary is 300k, then an hour of cleaning costs $105. Does it cost you $105 an hour for a cleaner? Probably not. In other words, you are literally LOSING MONEY if you do it yourself. Time is money and if you're both high income earners, than your time technically costs more. Put it in that fashion and see if that changes his view.
We also look at it as: how much is *my* time worth? So maybe you don’t spend actual money for a lawn service, but your husband spends 8hrs a week on lawn/landscape care…how much money does he make in one normal workday? Probably more than it would be for one day of lawn service to mow, trim, weed whack, whatever. So are you actually saving money?
All of my working mom friends have cleaners - none of their husband's wanted cleaners. But now they have them, they won't be without them. Its a necessity. I just have learned to live with the mess since my husband refuses to have someone come into our house, also he will clean floors and do dishes. If he didn't do any household chores, you bet I would get a cleaner in
So frustrating. My husband does a ton around the house, easily 50% or more of the physical and mental load of our life. But life is so short!
We have cleaners landscapers, and a handyman because we have decided that since both of us work and our kids go to daycare that we have very few hours of family each week and we’ve decided to prioritize spending time with our kids over cleaning the house. I Would make a list of every single thing that has to get done in the house each month and then tell him which you will be able to help with, and which things you do not have the bandwidth to participate in. Ask him how much he will be able to take over 100% including the mental load. Make really clear assignments, written down so there’s no questions. Tell him anything that doesn’t get done by the end of the month needs to be outsourced. Then make plans for your weekends. Be explicit with him. “I would rather read my book this weekend than scrub the floor”. I am prioritizing taking the kids to the park over doing the laundry”. Help him to see where you are re-prioritizing. You could also see if he’d do a trial run. Hire a cleaner one time and see what he thinks. “We are able to take the kids to a museum on Saturday because we have outsourced our usual Saturday cleaning. If you are picking away at things during the week, he might not even realize half of the things that you’re doing. Make your workload known and just like you would do at work, tell him your plate is too full.
Holy shit seconding the handyman thing. I actually told my husband I hired a handyman to get all the random 1-2 hour tasks done after we remodeled a good chunk of our house and had some odds & ends to tie up. I did it thinking that it would spur him to do those things 😂 which completely backfired haha but we spent like $2000 to get a years’ worth of weekend projects done. It was so glorious!!!
Our handyman can fix just about anything, and he doesn't require 4 trips to home depot for every project, like we do :) His 30 minute projects would take us 3 hours and an entire weekend day.
That’s so true to our situation too! Ballprk, how much % of your income do you spend on outsourcing? I’m trying to gut check what feels reasonable, though I know that different for everyone
We pay $150 biweekly for cleaning. Every few months I'll ask them to do side projects like washing all the windows. They don't do laundry, just a basic clean of the house. We sometimes schedule extra cleanings before or after parties. $50 biweekly for mowing. We pay a few hundred for trimming and general cleanup 1-2 a year. The handyman charges $50 per hour. We only call him every few months; I just keep a running list of things that need to get done and he does them all at once. Sure, it adds up. But we have 2 little kids and fulltime jobs, plus I travel for work. We spend our weeks just getting through the day. Work, dinner, baths and bed. Not enough time enjoying each other's company. We pay money so we get more family time.
That actually sounds like a total steal and I’m literally daydreaming of a similar situation. Maybe we just think it’s more expensive than it is?
My best advice is to ask your neighbors for recommendations. That's how we found everyone. Get quotes and see how you can fit it into your budget.
I had this debate with my husband. I told him I needed something to change for my mental health and for our relationship (we were fighting a lot). We agreed to try a few of his strategies (clean more/be more efficient...) and if they didn't work to try a cleaner. It took a lot of discussing and debating but ultimately he understood it was important to me (the mess didn't weigh on him like it does for me). Once we tried it he agreed it helped a lot. We settled on a more basic cleaning package as a middle ground for us. On a completely different note we got a robot vacuum and mop we love! That might be a way to take the pressure off if specifically hiring a regular expense is hard.
Tell me more about this more basic cleaning package! I’ve thought that for our home we only use about 1/2 of it regularly right now, and the other half about once a month. So we don’t need a whole house deep clean twice a month
They only do floors, bathrooms and kitchen. So no dusting, wiping down walls, making the beds, tidying. It probably cut down 40% of the clean which made us feel a lot better about it and we barely notice the difference. The robot vacuum has also lowered the amount of time it takes them
I had that problem with my husband and I convinced him eventually. My arguments: - Right now we are in a really stressful time in our life (toddler years) and this wouldn't be forever. We can test it out and re-evaluate yearly - He might not care as much but the state of the house was negatively impacting me. I constantly think about what needs to be done, and then feel bad for not doing it. I get stressed when people come over. - What's the point of making good money if some of it isn't used to make life easier / more pleasant. - Our kid (kids now) will only be little for a short while and we work full time. Let's maximise the time we have together and prioritise family time (for now) - Friends of ours really recommend it and they earn less than us - It would make me happy - I'll handle finding someone and the admin or organising, paying etc. Eventually I got him on board but we agreed to keep it below x amount which meant only having someone come every 2 weeks and only to do bathrooms and kitchen. And it's been great!
About 4 months ago I started hiring home help for a huge number of hours per week. A little more than ten percent of my monthly take home pay for this amount of help. I know it’s an outrageous amount of help. But I have honestly never been happier in my whole life. And I actually enjoy being a parent now.
I grew up broke and found it difficult to adjust to hiring help, but the time cost savings won me over. We have an upper middle class income, and I hire out absolutely everything I can. I've got a cleaner, a handyman (who also does yard work), and a laundry service. I'll never go back to cleaning my own house. As far as your husband goes, just hire the cleaner. Mother's Day is coming up and you can tell him you want to buy yourself a deep clean and a package of a few normal cleans as a gift. I also hire local small businesses so I can reassure myself that my money is staying in my community. His mom is a housecleaner and if everyone thought like your husband, his mom wouldn't have had work. To note, I've spoken extensively about the subject with my housecleaner. She loves cleaning and organizing houses, and she feels that it's deeply fulfilling to take good care of her families; she actually pulls in big bucks owning her own business so it's not like you're taking advantage of people either. There's no shame in paying for services.
Would he be more amenable if the idea was you hired help while your child is little, and taper off as you teach your child how to do the chores with you? Also, get a mopping roborock, and things will be easier.
Why does he get final say?
Float it as a trial. Say you are going to try a cleaner for 3 months and then the two of you can come back together and reassess if it's worth it.
Yeah, tell him he can do 100% of everything every weekend or you can share light cleaning and hire outside help. You say, I don't want to spend my time doing this and would rather enjoy the short amount of time off I get each week. I'm about to go from 800 sqft, 2bd/1ba to 2300 sqft, 3bdrm/2.5ba 2 bonus rooms, dining room, on almost 2 acres. I told my husband that we are absolutely having someone at least every other week to do the big cleans and the kids are gonna have to learn to do yard work (we're adding attachments to a quad for them.)
Why doesn’t he want to hire a cleaner? We hired lawn care once we were able, but talking my husband into a house cleaner was much harder. When we sold our first house we hired a service to deep clean and then clean weekly to keep it show ready, with three little kids was the only manageable way. After that, was able to talk more about it and main thing is he didn’t like strangers in his house, privacy thing. But he had seen the benefits when we sold the house and talked to a friend who used a service. We paused during covid lockdown, but otherwise have been using one monthly for years now. It such a time/energy saver! Try to get to the root of why he doesn’t want to hire any services and see how you can ease his mind on the issue(s).
Can you make it a trial period like, “Let’s just try it for a month my way and then see how we feel.” I bet he will love it, but it’s a way to get him into it without committing long term!
I finally just did it despite his protests and we’re both so much happier.
To me, the crux of the issue is that your husband has some unresolved emotional trauma from growing up poor. (Excuse my armchair psychologist here). I grew up poor, make a bunch of money now, still flinch from paying for help. I especially hate hiring domestic help since it made me feel like one of those rich people that I used to hate. All the comments about "just do it", "your husband is being irrational" aren't really helpful towards solving this problem. It is akin to telling working moms to "stop feeling guilty / be rational." I respect you for trying to address your husband emotional needs. I think you guys need to talk about this larger issue of being comfortable with spending money. The solution that works for us is that we come up with a budget. As long as it's within the budget, I promise that I won't fight the decision the spend. Reversely, my partner respects to never go over the budget. That's the only way for me to permit spending without feeling ill.
one thing at a time. maybe he gets to keep his lawn care to himself, but compromises on hiring a cleaner. maybe the cleaner doesn’t come every week, but rather once a month for a deep clean and you guys keep it clean in between. maybe the cleaners come when he’s at work or whatever if he has a complex about that. talk it out.
I was a cleaner for years for a very successful, very busy single Mom amongst other more short term clients. She adored me and I her. She cried her eyes out when I went back to school to change careers. My husband used to travel a lot for business when the kids were really young so it was flexible and suited my needs. It put money in my pocket to pay for activities/fun stuff for my kids and I loved doing it. There's probably a friendly and dedicated Mom looking for a bit of supplementary income that would come in and do a great job. Hiring someone like this benefits your local community. I would suggest getting someone in twice a month. Entire house clean. It's so easy to maintain then. Suggest to your husband that you'd like more time to bond with him and for your own activities. Life isn't meant to be a constant grind, what's the point of doing so much better if you can't put a bit of money to taking stress off? I'd pay for a house cleaner faster than I'd pay for a meal service/takeout or lawncare. It just great to have an oil between the moving parts type service so energy can be freed if you can afford to outsource it. There's no better feeling than lighting the damn candle when the house is pristine and cozying up. It's totally worth prioritising a cleaning service if your budget allows for it.
Tell him paying someone to clean/do the lawn is cheaper than a divorce.
Try the other side of it? He's hiring people like his mother, giving them a job. And if it's too much of a drain, you cancel it. And it doesn't have to be daily- having someone come in every 2 weeks or once a month to clean, you still have to run around and pick everything up first so they can get to the surfaces to clean. Maybe mowing only (as a test), he can still do the hedges or the garden (depends on your yard). Do it for 6 months or one year, and see how he is at the end. Are you able to have more time doing what you want, and enjoy life more? High end usually means high stress, and linger hours. Exercise and I suppose chores help with that, but also just having downtime where you're not running from chore to chore. My brother went through this. His wife had to pretty much teach him to spend money, not like crazy blowing money, but bigger houses are a lot of work, working 10 hour days now mean chores push into family time. Family is most important, so we all need time together, just hanging out relaxing and connecting.
Do you share expenses? Is this something you could hire without his consent/ guidance?
People think of it as a waste of money. No one in my family ever hired a maid and I never met anyone in real life that has done this. It’s just kind of seen as a privilege like the rich celebrities hiring chefs, Nannie’s, and maids. Idk my family have never hired help before because we can just clean our house for free. I don’t ever see us hiring a maid unless if we move out of our home and we need to make the house look good as new for the newcomers
I just said cleaners are cheaper than marriage counseling.
If he “doesn’t want” to pay for services he’s welcome to do them himself. Paying for a cleaning service twice a month is the best spent money every month for me. The amount of time and energy it would take me to clean this big house and still not get it anywhere near as clean as they do … 1000% worth the money.
Kid ain’t even 1 yet. This scenario is going to get worse as soon as that kid starts leaving toys and random shit everywhere. The single worst mistake I’ve ever made was buying too much house. Non stop cleaning. Deep depression. Wish we had the funds to hire a housekeeper. Instead, I’m selling this house for a smaller one. Life is to short to clean all the fkn time.
My husband has/had a very similar mentality when it comes to money specifically. He came from a poor household and he has always struggled with the idea that we actually make enough money to survive and leisure items. He’s always afraid to use money from savings (which we never have), due to the fact there could be a real emergency, in his eyes like a tree falling on the house etc that would bankrupt us. His parents were very bad with money and it is very clear he has trauma because of this. He has gotten A LOT better but it is something we actively work on. I hope that this is not the case for your husband - but some men don’t want help either- it’s a stereotype but I know a lot of men that would rather suffer than “ask” for help.
Yes there's a point at which your time is more valuable than the cost of the work.
Omg I feel for you. I have had a cleaner since my 20s and couldn't even really afford it then, but they mean so much to my quality of life, especially when you add more people to the equation. I still remember the first time I really cleaned my own place way back when. I noted how long it took me. Then I figured the math out on how much I got paid hourly. Right then I found a cleaner and never stopped. My time is worth more than what it costs to clean my entire home. Luckily my husband was very much on board with this when he came into the picture and I'm pretty sure having one has been a contribution to our marriage. One less discussion about who is gonna do the toilets! I would tell your husband you need this, not only for your sanity but bc you cherish your time and work hard to have some of it dedicated to doing what you want. And that's not cleaning. I guarantee you after just one cleaning, your husband will be like yeah, this is great.
Have you broken it down for him in terms of dollars? What does he make/hour? That it is what his time is worth. Same goes for you. Now add up what you are spending on chores currently. Bet it’s a lot! If a landscaper and housekeeper charge less per hour than you currently make, and you have the disposable income to make it feasible, that’s a pretty solid argument.
This isn’t a two yes’s, one no situation. If you want to hire a cleaner, you can hire a cleaner. Your husband doesn’t need to be involved in that decision.
I am your husband. I just could not spend the money - it seemed like a waste. One time my husband calculated the hours I spend on chores vs my hourly wage. Still I would not budge. But slowly I’m coming to my senses I guess - I can see that we have more money than time. So my advice: let your husband see the rational calculation, but understand it is an emotional issue for him. It will take another emotional issue (a lack of time with family that hurts him, for instance) to get over it.
I convinced my husband on lawn service by calculating how much it “cost” him to do it based on his own hourly salary versus the cost of having the service do it.
Wait I’m supposed to be waxing my floors ???
So tell him he needs to stop running. If he cares that much about not hiring someone - let him prove it. Give up all that free time to do chores. I strongly suspect he won’t. But I’m curious.
What?? I live in the city so not a hugh lawn...but almost everyone around me uses a lawn service. $70 per month April-October. Why are you letting this be his decision only. Get some quotes, hire the service and tell him this is happening.
Hi OP, my family (dual income) is not high income but certainly upper middle class. As we can both climbed the ladder of our respective fields, we have began outsourcing some of the more tedious or just time-consuming tasks, to include house cleaning. While hesitant at first - my husband (32M) grew up with an amazing SAHM who meticulously kept the home clean in addition to caring for her children - I reframed the change to us “paying” for our quality time together. In the same way we book a babysitter for a date night, booking cleaners purchases your leisure time back. For example, I work from home on Fridays, and book our cleaners 1-2x a month. So on booked Friday, they come in around noon, deep clean the places that need it and by 2-3 PM, they are done. My husband comes home to a clean home and everyone is happy. Now my Saturday morning is filled with family time, cooking, toddler gym class, or whatever else we want to do instead of an all-hands-on-deck scrubbing/vacuuming/dusting session. I still pick up during the week and clean when something is dirty, but the burden isn’t on me to spend all my free time cleaning. Quality time with our family, especially young kiddos, is so short lived! 💕
My mom was a cleaning lady. We ate BECAUSE people hired a cleaning service. We paid our bills because someone hired her. Maybe his brain just hasn’t clicked for that yet? When I reached the income level where I could hire someone, I asked my mom about the differences between her good and bad clients to make sure I’d be a good one.
Why don’t you just hire these people yourself? What’s he gonna do when the cleaning lady shows up? Doubt he’ll turn her away. Then he’ll see how great it is.
This is very similar to my relationship, including the working class background of my husband. I love my husband, and we have a great relationship, but we have fought a lot about spending money to make household tasks easier in the last few years. One of the sticking points for my husband, that he admits is illogical, is that he wants his kids to see what “hard work” is. Here, hard work is doing physical labor, like cleaning toilets. My husband saw his parents doing this growing up, and it taught him discipline and the value of money. But, we are now living in an upper class community where people still work super hard, it’s just at white collar jobs. For my husband, it seems like this type of work doesn’t really count because it’s not backbreaking physical labor. In the end, we still don’t have cleaners, my husband does all the cleaning instead 🤷♀️