[valdiorn]

I didn't "purchase" anything - but I upgraded from a "cleaner" to a "housekeeper". What's the difference, you might ask?

My wife and I are both working parents and we commute to London at least twice a week, leaving very little time for things like laundry and general tidying up.

We have an absolutely fantastic lady who comes in 3x a week, and rather than only doing the usual cleaning, i.e. mop the floors, clean the stove, dusting etc., she does a bit of everything. The laundry is taken care of, the expired/spoiled food in the fridge has been thrown out, kid's toy pile tidied up, my t-shirts have been folded and placed in their drawer. The bedding has been replaced, even the dog's bed has been cleaned.

I can't tell you the immense quality of life improvement this has brought us. Now, when we come home tired at 6pm, we don't have to spend the next 3 hours doing chores, we can just put little one to bed and then sit down and enjoy dinner together. It's brought us closer, made us happier and given us more time with our daughter.

If you can afford this luxury, I highly recommend it. It's the biggest quality of life improvement I've ever experienced - But you need to find a GOOD person you can trust to essentially run your house in your absence.

Needless to say, she's getting a nice Christmas bonus :)

[nunez]

I'm glad a housekeeper works for y'all, but to provide a contrarian view to round this out, I've found that doing a little bit of chores every day avoids the three hour pileups that you've described, i.e. throwing expired items out when they expire, doing the bed/clothes/etc every morning, etc. I personally would never ever pay for a housekeeper, but I'm also a neat freak!

[lmarcos]

May I ask how much does an assistant like that cost? If you cannot (don't want to) tell the price in absolute terms, then maybe in relatives one? (e.g., 5% of your monthly net income?)

[PaulRobinson]

In London you should budget for around £17-£20/hour, so 3 x 1 hour visits a week would be about £250/month, or £3k/year.

For some people that would be ludicrous, for others it's an absolute bargain.

Right now we bring somebody in for 2.5 hours every 2 weeks to do bedding, vacuuming, kitchen and bathroom cleaning. Totally worth it, but sometimes the laundry backs up when we're busy and becomes a mission. We might up it a bit next year and get laundry included.

[badcppdev]

Rather than a bonus consider bumping her hourly rate if your wife and/or you get a pay rise? We did this with a child minder a few years ago and it felt really right to share our positive financial situation with the person who was playing such an important role in our family. Although I note you're in the UK so a pay rise might not be on the cards.