My friends ditched me when I hired a cleaner and said I was showing off – I’m a busy-mum-of-2 & don’t have time to dust
A BUSY mum-of-two has revealed how her friends ditched her when she hired a cleaner to help at home, but she reckons they’re just jealous. Trudy and her husband were completely burnt out from working full-time and raising two young kids, and she needed the extra help. The Australian mum, 45, spoke to Kidspot about […]
A BUSY mum-of-two has revealed how her friends ditched her when she hired a cleaner to help at home, but she reckons they’re just jealous.
Trudy and her husband were completely burnt out from working full-time and raising two young kids, and she needed the extra help.
The Australian mum, 45, spoke to Kidspot about her struggle and revealed she has no regrets about hiring a cleaner – and still has one now that her kids are grown up.
“Our days were filled with very long hours of work, and all we wanted to do when we got home was eat, laugh with our kids, play, shower and then fall asleep. There was not enough time to even do all of that some days,” she told the publication.
“We desperately needed the help – we had no time to sit with the kids and our weekends were full from washing clothes, tidying the house – getting everything done and then have to start a new week exactly the same as the last.”
Trudy, whose kids were just two and four at the time, said her mental health was “diminishing” and the hectic schedule led to anxiety.
For the sake of their sanity, and for extra time with the kids, the couple decided on a cleaner.
“Our cleaner would have their own key and twice a week visit our home and it was absolute bliss for me to come home to washing and drying done as well as vacuuming,” Trudy said
Now her kids are grown, aged 24 and 21, but for Trudy, life has not slowed down.
“It’s actually more [busy] now that I am older, most people have the idea that the older you get, the more time you have one your hands and that’s untrue,” she explained.
Our days were filled with very long hours of work, and all we wanted to do when we got home was eat, laugh with our kids, play, shower and then fall asleep. There was not enough time to even do all of that some days.
Trudy
“I’m a yoga teacher and my studio is attached to the house, I also have an office that I share with my husband.”
Although Trudy will never have any regrets about having a cleaner twice a week for the past two decades – she has constantly been judged by people who she called her friends.
“My friends have judged me for having a cleaner for 20 years,” she said.
“Some of my friends have been absolutely appalled about me needing help, they say I’m quite capable to do it myself, or that my husband and daughter (21) have two arms and two legs, ‘why are they not cleaning the house?’” she added.
“They think that I teach three yoga classes a day, I should have a lot of time on my hands throughout the day to tend to ‘my duties’ – but I don’t.”
The judgement Trudy copped was just as harsh, if not worse, when their kids were younger.
“I had friends decide that us having help around the house was being ‘full of ourselves’ ‘showing off’ or ‘must be well off financially’,” she vividly recalls of the rude remarks.
“None of these statements are true for either times. We were actually working to earn wages to pay other people.”
In fact, the unnecessary judgement was so brutal that Trudy has lost friendships simply because she chooses to hire a cleaner.
“I was affected quite deeply over this, I hold my friends very dear to me, so this hurt a lot. I felt very lonely and did not want to invite anyone else into my life for quite some time… those people have left our lives for good,” she said sadly.
I had friends decide that us having help around the house was being ‘full of ourselves’ ‘showing off’ or ‘must be well off financially.
Trudy
“I think it must be jealousy, maybe they didn’t have the money (neither did we, but our mental health needed this). Seeing a clean house can be a slap in the face for others wondering why their own home is not.”
Speaking to Kidspot, Psychologist Jemma Doley said mums often feel pressure to manage a household because of traditional societal expectations, which we often learned through modelling from our parents from a very young age.
“Women, especially mums, often place this expectation on themselves to be able to do it all. Cook, clean, look after the kids, work, manage everyone’s schedules – it’s a never-ending list,” she explained.
“While lots of parents feel pressure and guilt that they aren’t ‘doing it right’, there are far more important aspects to parenting like spending quality time together, that matter so much more than the superficial things like being the perfect chef or cleaner!
Jemma said “there’s no shame in getting help around the house” if it means more time being mum and dad – and more time spent pursuing “other important values.”
But for Trudy, “it’s really such a silly thing to shame people on.”
“We should be uplifting each other up and give high fives for asking for help.” she said.
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