Getting a cleaner was one of the best things I did.

However - do write a list of what her tasks are, so things are clear from the outset.

I didn't do this and for several weeks she was an angel; she cleans every room (except my study, where I am working while she's here) and it makes a real difference.

However, after a few visits she started finding things to do so she could stay longer. Suddenly she was changing the bed without being asked, and folding all our clothes (even those inside a cupboard). She found things to wash and iron (and I don't really want my pillowcases ironed). And she even did a few strange things like cut up a drinks bottle to make a pen holder, and fold squares of kitchen roll into "napkins". It's a bit wierd and babyish, but she's not a child - she has a 7 year old daughter at home in Latvia.

So now I sometimes say that I have to go out at a certain time, when I don't... and I really wish I'd written a list of tasks to begin with. I've managed to intercept her on a few things (I buy flowers every week but they mysteriously die straight after she's been, so I've stopped her changing the water) but I feel a bit awkward doing it.

I know she needs the money, but just because we are better off than her doesn't mean I can hire her for more than 4 hours a week. And she does work very hard, I never catch her resting, and she only helps herself to glasses of water. I feel mean to criticise her, but I really wish I'd been strict from the outset; things would be a lot easier now!

I discussed this with a friend on Friday (who uses personal assistants but has had similar issues) and decided that I will write a list of her tasks and pin it up somewhere, and say that I think she's great but this is what I need her to concentrate on. After the main tasks I'll add some "If time..." tasks and a note to check with Flash for anything else.

I hope your cleaner works out - despite all of the comments above, I'm so glad to have taken on ours. It means that as a minimum everywhere gets hoovered and cleaned at least once a week, when previously the hoover came out when Mike had time, and the bathroom got cleaned when I had the energy, which was embarrassingly infrequent.

It's just that having initially been bowled over and delighted, I have come to realise that nobody is perfect - as I guess you have found with the childminder.

Good luck, do let us know how she gets on. And please don't feel a failure for not doing the housework. You can't do everything and you're a busy and excellent mum as well as working part time.

Oh - as for bread, we have a breadmaker too. I find it is a lot cheaper for standard loaves, although I much prefer the fancy ones. Have you tried different recipes? My favourites are orange bread (using orange juice - lovely toasted for breakfast) and olive and tomato bread (using passata instead of half the water, and chucking in a chopped jar of olives). I've tried cheese and pickle and other ones, but I find the ones with cheese are stickier and won't fully cook on the quick cycles - and I'm impatient!

The smell of freshly baked bread drifting through from the kitchen is lovely, isn't it?

We talked in the initial interview about what I wanted done regularly and also she specified that she wanted an additional 2-3 hours a week of work (to pay for English lessons, apparently), and I've made it clear my budget won't stretch to more than 3 hours. So far she hasn't got through my entire list in 3 hours, but that's because of dealing with accumulated grime.

Thanks for the warning though, I will be prepared to deal with the issue if it comes up (as it happens I already do have a regular commitment on the day she comes, just after she goes).

I'm sure you're more than competent to deal with it, just thought I'd add my cautionary tale.

We agreed up to 4 hours too, and to begin with she did deep clean one room and then do what she could to the others, and now everything's in order she just cleans everything in the normal manner.

We dealt with her turning up too early when I opened the door to her in a dressing gown assuming it was the postman. But I need to get better at organising her with the regular tasks.

Glad she's doing a good job. I always used to be secretly jealous of people having a "lady who does".

Edited at 2008-03-02 05:11 pm (UTC)

We have tried lots of recipes. Tony really likes malthouse loaves, but malthouse flour is a lot more expensive than ordinary wholemeal. We are both particularly fond of the spicy fruit loaves with eggs and milk.

I love love love waking up to the breadmaking smell.

Oooh! Please could you point me at a spicy fruit loaf recipe that works in a breadmaker? Also let me know which programme it needs - I tend to chuck everything on the "basic, rapid" programme unless I know it needs the extra time, and with the gooeyness of eggs and milk I guess this one needs the full time to cook? Sounds delicious.

Our breadmaker comes with the spicy fruit recipe, but you do indeed need to run it at the full normal time - 4h for white flour and 5h for wholemeal. I like to put it on first thing in the morning at weekends when Charles has got me out of bed. Tony and I can eat it together for lunch, and it makes the house smell wonderful when I'm kicking Tony out of his lie-in.

Yeast: 1 teaspoon
Strong Wholemeal Flour: 400g
Sugar: 2 teaspoons
Butter: 75g (or 6 tablespoon oil)
Salt: 1 teaspoon
Cinnamon: 2 teaspoons
Mixed Spice: 1 teaspoon
Eggs, medium: 2
Water: 120ml
Milk: 120ml
Mixed dried fruit: 150g

The white flour recipe is identical except for 10ml less water and 10ml less milk. We have found that a mix of sultanas and chopped dried apricots works beautifully for the fruit, a bit less sweet than just sultanas which I was favouring before).

Our breadmaker has a compartment for putting the dried fruit in, so it drops it in at the right point if we use the "Bake Raisin" mode rather than standard "Bake". The manual is shared with a cheaper model which apparently beeps to do the same thing.

Thanks very much - I will try that asap. My breadmaker did come with a recipe book but it didn't contain one of those.

Sounds delicious, thanks again!

(Oh, I'll use the Bake Raisin cycle too.)

Edited at 2008-03-03 08:42 pm (UTC)

Interestingly this is something I've semi-noticed with my housekeeper too: she finds the oddest stuff to keep her busy. However, since our place really did look like a very thorough tornado had been through, she's still not reached the time-wasting phase (unless you count playing with my kitten - and I can forgive her that because he is simply irresistably cute!).

The weird thing I've noticed is that she's over-generous: she gave me a gift-card for Christmas, bought me a little valentines present, and a birthday present after she saw my cards, she brought over a spider plant, and arrived with an entire bag full of clothes and gifts for my impending baby (from a thrift store, admittedly, but it was still a lot of stuff). I'm finding that a lot harder to deal with. I'm not completely sure why I have a problem with it, but it does seem very odd to me.

Same here - mine brought Christmas presents (wrapped, so I felt I had to get her something and bought her a bonzai tree) - she gave me choccies from poundland and dog treats.

Last week she returned from a week back home and brought me some russian chocolates telling me how much she loves them and how her daughter (who I've never met) helped her choose them and was looking forward to me eating them. They taste like an even cheaper version of Ferrero Rocher or Kinder Bueno. Ugh. But as she encouraged me to open them and watched while I took a bite saying "good, yes? do you like them?" I felt I had to say "thank you, they are delicious!"

And now she will probably give me such things again...

Perhaps it's just a perk of having a housekeeper then! (If surreal or inedible gifts count as a perk, at least)

I spoke to the neighbour who referred me to this cleaner, and the neighbour feels that it's not a need to earn more (although she is hard up) but more a need to stay busy as long as possible. She's renting a small place and hates being on her own.

With that in mind, I stopped to chat to her a couple of times today, and to ask how she feels. I agree - she's lonely. I paid her for all the time she did today, because I had no change, but she volunteered that I should pay a bit less next week.

Now I'm seeing it from a different point of view I think it will be easier to manage.

Clicking back to the entry about toyboxes for Charles, I was amused to find they were Really Useful Boxes, just like the ones I bought today for organising our piles of software CDs & DVDs. Out of interest, which size did Tony reckon go so well with Ivar? I bought two 3l boxes (and will be buying two more), they're a near perfect match to 80x30 cm^2 Ivar shelves.

OMG, they have a *website*. Now I have an inexplicable desire for *more storage boxes*. Grief, I am so pathetic.

I had to find my order email.

The ones Tony was interested in were the 19L ones, which fit neatly two at a time on 80x30cm IVAR shelves (but obv much higher than the 3L ones). I think I use the 3L ones for some of my at-desk filing.