I like my house to be clean at all times, just in case anyone comes round. This includes if a cleaner comes round â which pretty much answers the question of why Iâve never had one. Yet I didnât realise there was more going on behind a lifetime of unease around the notion of hired help until I was on a date recently. She asked if I had a cleaner, the clear implication being: âIâm not going anywhere near your bed if you donât regularly have it professionally cleaned.â
Something I had always considered to be a luxury was suddenly being presented as mandatory. I replied with my honest answer: âA cleaner? Thatâs a bit... posh, isnât it?â It was an instinctive judgement that I couldnât justify at the time. After weeks of lying on my spotless yet empty bed, I slowly started unpicking why Iâd used that specific word: âposhâ.
The last major discussion around the status of cleaners in British life came in May 2020, during the Covid pandemic, when the Tories let them return to work while close family members were still shut out. It led many to decry the priorities of a government that seemed so at ease with domestic servitude that it prioritised âthe staffâ over basic family bonds. Guardian columnist Owen Jones sparked a debate about whether employers of cleaners should effectively furlough their staff, which amusingly prodded the sensibilities of the 17 per cent of UK households who use them.
Confusion and anxiety over the subject is a relatively new phenomenon. Bertie Wooster never fretted about Jeeves; Will Smith never felt awkward around his butler, Geoffrey, in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. By contrast, today I donât know anyone who doesnât engage in a frenzied bout of âpre-cleaningâ before their cleaner arrives. In part, to hide the drug paraphernalia and evidence of a sexual private life. But itâs also due to a latent uneasiness about someone else doing tasks that most ablebodied humans can do themselves.
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