Paying For Domestic Services
When Mrs P and I moved into our current home, over twenty years ago, we were both working full time. As the garden was poorly maintained and neither of us had any horticultural skills, we decided to employ a gardener. At the time it was a practical solution to the issue of garden maintenance and remains so today. Hence it is a service we continue to use, although our personal health is now the main reason we pay a gardener.
When Mrs P and I moved into our current home, over twenty years ago, we were both working full time. As the garden was poorly maintained and neither of us had any horticultural skills, we decided to employ a gardener. At the time it was a practical solution to the issue of garden maintenance and remains so today. Hence it is a service we continue to use, although our personal health is now the main reason we pay a gardener.
More recently, we paid to have our oven cleaned. Again, this was a decision that was mainly made because we find the logistics of the task difficult. The results were better than anything we could have done ourselves. We are now giving serious consideration to having a cleaning company visit once a month to carry out a substantive household clean. This will then be supplemented with basic cleaning on a weekly basis, carried out by ourselves. Again the main reasons for using such services is time, our ability to do such things ourselves and the fact that the work is often done to a higher standard.
I personally have no problem with the idea of paying for domestic services. They are in principle equitable business transactions, carried out by people who have superior skills in the requisite field. Furthermore, the benefits of such arrangements go beyond the customer and vendor dynamic. Those supplying such services as gardening, car valeting or household cleaning are running businesses which are good for the wider economy. Yet despite all this, I occasionally encounter people who “frown upon” such business arrangements. Their opprobrium is not aimed so much at the providers of these services but more specifically at me for using them.
I am curious to try and understand where this mindset comes from. Is it born of a sense of middle-class guilt, perceptions of laziness, concerns about socio-economic inequality and the exploitation of workers? Perhaps it is a hangover from seventies socioeconomic politics? Or is it more entrenched in the UK’s neverending relationship with class? Do people still see such transactional services as reinforcing some archaic “upstairs, downstairs” social divide? Or is it as simple as the general lack of respect and dignity afforded to "unskilled" labour in society. Let us not forget the social dimension to this conundrum. Is hiring a cleaner an acceptable way to achieve a work/life balance, or is it merely outsourcing inequality. Maybe it’s simply a case that I encounter too many unreconstructed Marxists?
The philosophical arguments against such services notwithstanding, the demand for cleaning and other similar services, is at an all-time high in the UK, with 17% of households now hiring a cleaner. Many people see it as a practical and efficient way to free up leisure time, which is a premium and finite commodity. As for the social dynamic between customer and vendor, in my experience it is far from “feudal”. I treat those providing a service in my home with the same courtesy as I would outside of it.
Perhaps this is a uniquely British quirk? Does the same criticism of using domestic services arise in the US, which to my mind is a far more transactional society. Surely the growth of the gig economy must be putting pay to this somewhat archaic perspective? There are many more practical services available for hire than ever before. From bespoke cake making to jetwashing your drive. In the meantime, I am certainly going to continue to pay for whatever domestic services our household requires. Furthermore, the older I get, the more I shall use them, for obvious reasons.
