what household 'chores' does your au pair do?

[Anonymous]

With our first au pair we were not very firm up front in establishing a list of 'chores' other than straightening up after the kids, kids laundry, keeping her own space tidy and dishes for herself & kids when on duty. We tried at one point to get her to help with re-organizing toys and rotating books etc, but that failed. The tidying happens but it's half hearted and things get put away but not in a very organized fashion or aren't taken from one floor of the house to another, etc. She expresses regularly her feeling that we have way too many toys as an issue.

Anyway, I am not looking for a maid (we have a semi-regular maid service who does 'real' cleaning') - but feel like keeping the toys and kids stuff organized should be part of cleaning up.

Would appreciate any guidance on what 'chores' you have your au pair help with that you feel is reasonable and how you keep some accountability for it.

[Anonymous]

Our AP is responsible for the childrens laundry- clean, dry put away. She is also responsible for managing the children in cleaning up and putting away their toys and books. Our kids are 2 and 3. We expect our children to clean up after themselves. She does help them as their are things they can't do perfectly (folding play blankets, closing containers, etc), but the cleaning is primarily done by the kids. Our AP is also responsible for her own room and bathroom. She does lunch, breakfast for the kids and clean up of the kitchen after these meals while we are at work, but I don't view that as a chore, more like part of the childcare aspect.

We don't rotate toys or books. I take care of rotating and sorting through clothes for sizes and seasons.

While not a "chore" she helps with the pots and pans after all our dinners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our AP is responsible for the childrens laundry- clean, dry put away. She is also responsible for managing the children in cleaning up and putting away their toys and books. Our kids are 2 and 3. We expect our children to clean up after themselves. She does help them as their are things they can't do perfectly (folding play blankets, closing containers, etc), but the cleaning is primarily done by the kids. Our AP is also responsible for her own room and bathroom. She does lunch, breakfast for the kids and clean up of the kitchen after these meals while we are at work, but I don't view that as a chore, more like part of the childcare aspect.

We don't rotate toys or books. I take care of rotating and sorting through clothes for sizes and seasons.

While not a "chore" she helps with the pots and pans after all our dinners.

Pp here- To answer your second question as what is appropriate, I would say sorting the sizes and seasons of clothes would be appropriate and rotating and organizing the toys and cleaning up the kids rooms. But I think her ability to do this might depend on how much free time she has within the 45 hour constraints. Since our kids nap in the afternoon, I'd prefer to give my AP some down time for those two hours than fill the hours with chores. If the kids were in school and our AP was working more like 25- 30 hours a week I would feel more comfortable asking her to help with more child related chores.

[Anonymous]

Kids' laundry, helping our kids to make their beds and straighten their rooms, helping to clean up toys/activities, dishes (or load dishwasher) and wiping the countertop after meals that she prepares. Out of our three APs, only one of them actually got the "sorting toys" idea without a lot of direction. They have all helped sort through clothes during the change of seasons. As far as "helping out" around the house, our APs help load the dishwasher after dinner, unload the dishwasher occasionally, and empty the trash in the bathroom they share with the kids. We also ask them to take out the trash/recycling in the kitchen instead of letting it overflow, but that's hit or miss.

[Anonymous]

* Kids' laundry (wash, fold/hang, put away)
* Oversee/Help kids keep their rooms tidy
* Vacuum kids' rooms 1x per week
* Assist with seasonal changeover in kids' closets, pack up outgrown clothes, drop off at donation place
* Help kids with keeping "controlled chaos" in the basement (their domain to play, paint, etc.)

My kids are 10 and 11 so they don't really have a lot of toys to keep after.

OTHER than the kid related chores, there are a few chores that she does as a contributing member of the family and household. These are:
* Be on the rotation for daily dishwasher duty (we all take turns)
* Take recycling to the curb 1x per week
* Have kids take trash cans to/from curb 2x per week (she reminds the kids to do it and oversees it)

We have a house cleaning service that comes in regularly so she is never asked to deep clean anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids' laundry, helping our kids to make their beds and straighten their rooms, helping to clean up toys/activities, dishes (or load dishwasher) and wiping the countertop after meals that she prepares. Out of our three APs, only one of them actually got the "sorting toys" idea without a lot of direction. They have all helped sort through clothes during the change of seasons. As far as "helping out" around the house, our APs help load the dishwasher after dinner, unload the dishwasher occasionally, and empty the trash in the bathroom they share with the kids. We also ask them to take out the trash/recycling in the kitchen instead of letting it overflow, but that's hit or miss.

Same here. Of that list, everything "child related" we don't consider to be a separate household "chore" (i.e. a "roommate chore"), but rather part of the job. We also haven't had good luck with asking APs to sort/organize toys and children's out-grown our out-of-season clothes. I think that sort of task is only done "well" if the AP can intuit each particular host parent's OCD sorting tendencies! Our current AP (like HD) just does not have the same tendencies as I do in the sorting and tidying realm!

Our AP's only "household chore" is unloading the dishwasher each morning. Other than that, she is just responsible for tidying up after herself (in common areas, in her room, in her bathroom). We have a cleaning service for heavy cleaning, and the service cleans her room and bathroom too. We ask that if APs notice that the trash or recycling is overflowing, to please take it out. Only our current AP has actually ever done that!

[Anonymous]

We have a 24 year old PT live-in nanny who is very much like an AP in terms of job description (we were going to get an AP but found this 'loca' person instead).

We have almost exactly the same issues - half hearted efforts, not much of a sense of how to efficently tidy and organise, even a bit lazy. Once I asked her to tidy my DD's toys and she spent hours sorting, categorizing and folding every single piece of Barbie clothing, it was such a waste of time, and all the bins of mismatched games etc never got touched. And of course the Barbie clothes stayed like that for about 24 hours before being dumped out and then thrown back into the bin in their usual perfectly acceptable jumble.

We have a calendar that has weekly to do lists and a place for weekly message. I leave her lists and reminders in there of things to do. Even then it's not always easy to follow up on everything and get it all done ... last week she was meant to organise the crafts and games in the basement and ended up leaving a big pile of stuff on the floor that didn't fit on the shelves / she wasn't sure what to do with, and I had to just cram it all back on the shelves as I don't have time to deal with it.

I actually gave up on getting her to clean her room, even though our job description is quite clear on that. After she hadn't done it for several months I started to get the cleaning lady to go in and dust and vacuum every once in a while. I think she's had a bit of sheltered upbringing and only ever lived with her parents before so it's a bit like having a teenage daughter.

You have to pick your battles. She is otherwise great with the kids and does things like the after dinner cleanup that my husband and I hate to do as between that and the kids' evening routines we used to never have any time left in the evening.

[Anonymous]

OP, what exactly do you think she should be doing?

[Anonymous]

OP here - my main frustration is things getting put in random piles during the 'tidying up' - and not put back away 'where things go' - and what someone else above referenced of bins of mismatched toys and games where pieces of things end up in random places so they don't get used.

[Anonymous]

I think someone above was right - your AP would have to have the same sorting/tidying up tendencies as the Host Mother and probably she doesn't so.... for example, I would NEVER organize or sort or anything the barbie clothing - but I could NOT stand myself if there were mismatched anythings in a bucket when they clearly belonged in 8 other buckets. But I would also involve the kids in doing this - honestly, their toys, they should be taught and managed to keep it organized. So I'd dump that bucket of mismatched whatevers and the children and I would figure out together where it all went. And if some of it just doesn't go anywher5e, then we'd have a bucket of junk. And of course she couldn't throw it away because she's an AP so you will ultimately have to deal with that bucket.

BUT I have a very strong organizing gene (although my office desk is a mess, go figure!).

PS: it is possible to just have to many toys - if they don't use them but they get all over the place, it is hard to keep them organized. The goal is that with the right number of games and toys, and the right organization, the kids can do much/most of it (like the PP with a 2 and a 3 yr old, the adults need to help and work with the children but elementary school children should need much less supervision around that if it's organized in the first place)

I'd not focus on this aspect. Have her do all the other stuff that she does do, leaving you time to spend 1 rainy afternoon doing this organizing job. And involve her and the kids in it (assuming they aren't younger than 3 yrs old) so it moves faster.

[Anonymous]

My suggestion is always to do it yourself in front of your au pair, whatever it is that you want her to do. We all have a way of doing things. If I want it done the way I do it, I do it first in front of our au pair. This way, she can watch me do it. Then I ask her to do it and I stay with her. I make suggestions and I always try to underline what she did well first. On our profile, we stated that we don't currently have an external clean up maid and that when we start doing the whole weekly clean up we expect our au pair to help us (and not hide in her room or happen to leave the house right at that time for whatever reason).

For example, I gave my boy a bath in front of her the first day she was here so that she saw how I like it to be done.
Also I cleaned uo my child's bedroom and I showed her how I want it done.
Then it's important to always follow up and communicate, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Don't assume common sense.

Ours picks up toys more and tells the kids they have to help clean up every day after we asked her keep the playroom cleaner. However, she still shoves random toys on shelves that are too high (so obvious she did it since the kids can't reach the 4-5th shelf up). Not sure if she's doing it consciously to keep those particular toys away from the kids or she just sees an open shelf during cleanup time. I resort and rearrange toys weekly (including rotating some) because it would take me as much time to hover over AP and tell her how I wants things done because it's probably something she'd never fully do the way I'd want it done anyway.

So if you mean clean and organized as "all toys picked up off the floor," this is doable. If you mean "all pieces sorted to go with the toy they belong to and all the puzzles organized together in one corner," then you will likely have to drastically lower your expectations.

[Anonymous]

If you have a system for the toys where everything has a place, it's reasonable to expect your au pair to learn that system and follow it. I think organizing from scratch is much more difficult and depends on a person's personality, to some extent (and anyway, might well not match what you want).

So if you have places for all those toys, then make sure they're clearly labeled and tell her where each thing goes (legos go in this bin upstairs, stuffed animals go in that bin in the playroom), and explicitly spell out that during clean-up, toys from anywhere in the house need to be returned to the proper place. Be explicit, don't just say 'clean up better.'

But if you have things that don't have their own place, I don't think it's likely that you'll luck into having an au pair who can come up with a coherent organizational system that matches how you'd want it done.

[Anonymous]

If au pair task is to put away dishes that are related to child care, then does that mean that the coffee mug used by dad boss can be left on the coffee table?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If au pair task is to put away dishes that are related to child care, then does that mean that the coffee mug used by dad boss can be left on the coffee table?

If the AP wants to strictly be treated as an employee and nothing more, then leave the dad boss' mug on the table. However, this makes for a very long year. AP cannot have her cake and eat it, too (want to be treated like a family member and be given family benefits but not in return give courtesy like putting away another family member's mug). It is a give and take when everyone is living under the same roof.