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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our 4th AP has been with our family for 2 months.  We have 2 school-aged kids.  She works 630-730 am and then 230-530 pm M-F.  We say we do occasional date nights but have only really done one since she's been here.  We eat together as a family for dinner M-F,  my husband and I cook 3 meals, AP cooks one (usually a meal kit or frozen lasagna with salad...something easy), on Fridays we always order pizza and watch a movie.  Weekends we do "fend for yourself" style eating but AP is often out all day on weekends and if we do cook something we always offer it to her as well.

Anyway, we had established that the person who is cooking also does the dishes because it seemed easier than arguing with my husband about whose turn it is :)  And I've realized that other than that one night per week, AP is really not doing 1/3 of the work of the family dinners which I actually kind of expect her to do.  Previous APs have unloaded the dishwasher in the mornings and reload ed it with breakfast dishes, take out trash or recycling if it's full, and generally clean up the kitchen in the morning after the kids (husband and I don't eat breakfast at home but might use a coffee cup or two).  Is it reasonable to ask her to work until 8 am during the week to empty dishwasher, reload it with breakfast dishes, take out trash/recycling if full, and generally return kitchen to a clean state before she goes off duty until the afternoon?  She does wash up her own breakfast and lunch dishes (by hand) and the kids dishes from breakfast (also by hand).  But every day when I get home from work there are the coffee cups and I have to unload the dishwasher and often take out one of the bins.

What do you think?[/quote]

Yes, that's totally reasonable, as long as you're not leaving your own stuff for her to clean up.  Unloading the dishwasher has always been an au pair specific task, and cleaning up after yourself has gone without saying.  Emptying the trash you might have to specifically tell her, but again totally reasonable as long as duties are split.[/quote]

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