Singles and DINKs - Housecleaners

[Anonymous]

We're empty nesters with one retired, and we have a cleaner.

[Anonymous]

We're empty nesters, still working full time. Kids are in college. We got cleaners to get us through that busy stage of life when the kids are in activities, we're working full time, weekends are always jam packed, etc.

We're way less busy now...but still have the cleaners. It's something we hate doing, the value of our time > money, we can afford it...why not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're empty nesters, still working full time. Kids are in college. We got cleaners to get us through that busy stage of life when the kids are in activities, we're working full time, weekends are always jam packed, etc.

We're way less busy now...but still have the cleaners. It's something we hate doing, the value of our time > money, we can afford it...why not?

You are likely millionaires and somewhat feeble with age, this is the antithesis of the OP scenario of young people just starting out to build wealth

[Anonymous]

I am Gen X as well and never even knew anyone irl who had a housecleaner.

I grew up having daily ➕ weekly household chores.
I had to make my bed every morning as well as disinfect and scour my bathroom every weekend.
I never got an allowance for my chores even though most of my peers did growing up.

I think having a cleaner do the annoying tasks such as mopping and scrubbing is something younger people are willing to spend $$ on since everyone is always so busy these days.

Even if they are busy on social media.
😂

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're empty nesters, still working full time. Kids are in college. We got cleaners to get us through that busy stage of life when the kids are in activities, we're working full time, weekends are always jam packed, etc.

We're way less busy now...but still have the cleaners. It's something we hate doing, the value of our time > money, we can afford it...why not?

I think once you have a housecleaner, it is really tough to go back to cleaning your own house.

I remember people going crazy during the pandemic because they were forced to do their own housework after having the luxury of outsourcing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am Gen X as well and never even knew anyone irl who had a housecleaner.

I grew up having daily ➕ weekly household chores.
I had to make my bed every morning as well as disinfect and scour my bathroom every weekend.
I never got an allowance for my chores even though most of my peers did growing up.

I think having a cleaner do the annoying tasks such as mopping and scrubbing is something younger people are willing to spend $$ on since everyone is always so busy these days.

Even if they are busy on social media.
😂

Think of Reality Bites, and imagine those character hiring someone to clean up after them.

[Anonymous]

I'm a gen Xer and my family had a housekeeper/cleaner. I think it depends on where you grew up. We did not grow up in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this common? I work with several folks in their 20s and 30s, and several of the single folk and DINKs have weekly or bi-weekly cleaners.

We are not a hard charging office, we are a sleepy government contractor (thing Booz or CACI), so it’s not like a big law partner where we work long hours, travel, and make the big bucks with no bandwidth to clean and time is extremely valuable.

Is this a generational thing? I’m GenX and we never had cleaners until my spouses promotion started requiring much longer hours and our 3rd kid started making his own messes! The kids do laundry and help with daily chores; the cleaners are doing the base level deep clean that would eat up our weekend. Even then it feels indulgent!

Back in my 20s, when I was single (married and late 50s now), when I made GS-9 (then $28k/year), I got a bi-weekly housekeeper. Kids now long gone and it's just the 2 of us, and we still have a biweekly housekeeper.

My time is worth it to not have to do the cleaning.

[Anonymous]

My husband is retired and we still have a cleaning crew. I had one since we got married.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When DH and I were 20-something DINKS we outsourced cleaning. He had typical bachelor habits at the time (and also was in the beginning of his medical residency) and I resented being the one cleaning the bathrooms each week, vacuuming, dusting, etc. I did not work as much, but I still worked FT and had a 45 minute commute each way. When I proposed splitting the cleaning, he proposed a bi-weekly house cleaner, and that worked out great!

+1 GenXer here and DH and I began outsourcing cleaning in our early 30s before kids, when arguing about cleaning the bathroom became a recurring theme. Cheaper than marriage counseling or divorce - a no brainer.