Question for nannies who do more than "light housekeeping"

[Anonymous]

If you do regular house cleaning, laundry, and/or errands as part of your job, has this always been the case? Has any of this come with more money?

We've had a nanny for going on 3 years and think she is great. I feel like we treat her well and that her compensation is fair--not at the top end, but not at the bottom either. When she started with us, we asked for what I would consider pretty minimal housekeeping duties--wiping off the kitchen counters, cleaning up kids' toys, and loading/emptying the dishwasher. No kids' laundry, no meal prep aside from whatever she serves them for breakfast and lunch.

Last fall, our older DC started K so for most of the day (8:30ish until 3:45) she watches our younger DC only, who still naps for an hour or so most days. We didn't ask for or expect any increase in housekeeping duties. Looking forward, this fall our older will be in school (same schedule) and our younger will attend preschool 3 mornings a week. Several people have suggested that this would become time in which our nanny could take on additional duties--doing the kids' laundry at the least, and on up from there--cleaning our house, doing our grocery shopping, doing our laundry have all been mentioned by friends who have older kids and nannies. I'm a little reluctant to go there because I don't think our nanny really wants to clean our house, and as I know posters on here will point out, there will be plenty of days on which she'll have one or both kids all day due to illness, school closure, whatever.

On the other hand, I feel like DH is bugged by the idea that she'll be here for 6-8 hours every week getting paid with essentially nothing to do. I look at it as an insurance policy (and surely it's less than what we'd pay for backup care) and don't really care that she'll get an extended break on those days. Is there a happy medium?

[Anonymous]

Ask her. If any employer asked me about "cleaning" their house, I would be so offended that I'd be on my way out. Thank goodness, no one ever has.

But I do enjoy organizing, so you just need to discuss it with her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ask her. If any employer asked me about "cleaning" their house, I would be so offended that I'd be on my way out. Thank goodness, no one ever has.

But I do enjoy organizing, so you just need to discuss it with her.

I should add to my above post, I always leave a space at least as clean and tidy as I found it, if not more so. But the idea of being asked to someone's housekeeper just doesn't sit well with me.

So far I've have employers who value the importance of stability for their children's care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ask her. If any employer asked me about "cleaning" their house, I would be so offended that I'd be on my way out. Thank goodness, no one ever has.

But I do enjoy organizing, so you just need to discuss it with her.

I should add to my above post, I always leave a space at least as clean and tidy as I found it, if not more so. But the idea of being asked to someone's housekeeper just doesn't sit well with me.

So far I've have employers who value the importance of stability for their children's care.

*to be

[Anonymous]

I guess I don't see why it's "offensive" Sure, you might prefer a two hour break each day, but isn't it reasonable for an employer to revisit your duties as their needs change? More housekeeping may not be for you. Or, as OP was suggesting, there may be a middle position with kids laundry avid were and errands. But I don't get the immediate response of "offense" and even the implication that not waiting to pay someone for 6 hours of break time a week means they don't value stability in their kids lives (now that's offensive!)

I would think if many posters here want more value placed on caring for kids (devalued because it is traditionally unpaid work done by women), they would not go out of their way to devalue similar domestic work done by others.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it's out of turn to ask her to take on the children's laundry while they're in school, and I'm a nanny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's out of turn to ask her to take on the children's laundry while they're in school, and I'm a nanny.

I agree that the kid's laundry is 100% acceptable to discuss, but not your laundry of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess I don't see why it's "offensive" Sure, you might prefer a two hour break each day, but isn't it reasonable for an employer to revisit your duties as their needs change? More housekeeping may not be for you. Or, as OP was suggesting, there may be a middle position with kids laundry avid were and errands. But I don't get the immediate response of "offense" and even the implication that not waiting to pay someone for 6 hours of break time a week means they don't value stability in their kids lives (now that's offensive!)

I would think if many posters here want more value placed on caring for kids (devalued because it is traditionally unpaid work done by women), they would not go out of their way to devalue similar domestic work done by others.

Funny how your priorities are just "different." Sad, imo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess I don't see why it's "offensive" Sure, you might prefer a two hour break each day, but isn't it reasonable for an employer to revisit your duties as their needs change? More housekeeping may not be for you. Or, as OP was suggesting, there may be a middle position with kids laundry avid were and errands. But I don't get the immediate response of "offense" and even the implication that not waiting to pay someone for 6 hours of break time a week means they don't value stability in their kids lives (now that's offensive!)

I would think if many posters here want more value placed on caring for kids (devalued because it is traditionally unpaid work done by women), they would not go out of their way to devalue similar domestic work done by others.

I'm not PP, but I too would not appreciate being asked to do housekeeping. Not because it is housekeeping (I clean my own house after all), but because to me that is not within the scope of my job. I would be similarly offended if my boss asked me to do their taxes, fix their sink, or take their phone calls; it simply isn't within the scope of the job I signed up for. Now I'm sure some genius will pop in and say that the job is whatever the boss defines it as, and of course it is to an extent, but it isn't good management to drastically change the definition and scope of someone's position and expect to retain good employees. If your boss hired you to do your job, and you agreed to it and are perfectly comfortable doing tasks generally within that realm, I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate them coming to you and saying "our needs have changed a bit and what really I need now is a butt wiper/whatever you used to be."

All of that being said, I have no desire to sit around and stare at your walls for 8 hours a week, and have you resent me for it. I would appreciate my employer coming to me with their concerns and having a discussion about how we can make those hours productive. I think at the very least she can take on kid laundry now, and maybe she has things that she enjoys doing and wouldn't mind taking on for you. I love to cook, and don't see it as work. I would be happy to prepare dinner for the family on mornings I had no children.

[Anonymous]

Funny how your priorities are about maximizing your paid break time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Funny how your priorities are about maximizing your paid break time.

No, my priority is the best possible care of the child I have agreed to care for.
What's yours? Obviously, it's different than mine.

[Anonymous]

The manny has always done the kids laundry, and errands. We wrote into the contract how any errands per week was max. I do meal prep when I have time; otherwise he does it. It's been this way from the start except when first DD was a baby and there was no meal prep needed for her.

We leave him a clean house; he leaves us a clean house.

[Anonymous]

Btw. You can consider the work of taking care of children to have more value than the work of cleaning but still consider the people who do these jobs to be of equal value. When any question about nannies taking on housework is met (not universally but pretty substantially) with a chorus of "But I am not a housekeeper!" all that comes across is a pretty ugly distain for the people that do that work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny how your priorities are about maximizing your paid break time.

No, my priority is the best possible care of the child I have agreed to care for.
What's yours? Obviously, it's different than mine.

And doing housework during the time they are in preschool compromises that care how?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Btw. You can consider the work of taking care of children to have more value than the work of cleaning but still consider the people who do these jobs to be of equal value. When any question about nannies taking on housework is met (not universally but pretty substantially) with a chorus of "But I am not a housekeeper!" all that comes across is a pretty ugly distain for the people that do that work.

Wrong, but nice try.