Have you got a cleaner? The top chores we pay someone else to do

Retirement comes with many benefits, although the least thrilling would appear to be the ‘opportunity’ to clean your own house.

In our survey of 2,800 Saga customers, 19% pay for a cleaner. Of the 81% who don’t, a third used to, but since retiring feel they ought to do it themselves. (Spare a thought for the respondent who said she had to give up the cleaner when her husband retired as he didn’t know they had one.)

Of those who do get help – the 19% plus 4% who have unpaid help from family members – the motives vary by age group.

The top reason given by the youngest cohort (50-64) was to free up time, whereas for those aged 65-74, the top reason was delightfully honest: that they hated cleaning.

Those aged 75+ most often needed help due to physical health.

Eight in ten (84%) have a friendly relationship with their cleaner, not just a purely professional one, and most are happy to pay for the service.

"It spreads the wealth and gives others work, releasing me to do other things that interest me and are useful for the community," noted one respondent.

"I’ve worked hard to afford it – and she’s better at it than I am," said another.

Others, though, feel guilty about not doing their own cleaning; those who are lonely like the company.

When it comes to the jobs we ask cleaners to do:

• Vacuuming - 92%
• Bathroom cleaning - 91%
• Mopping floors - 87%
• Dusting - 84%

Strangely, although our customers’ most hated task was cleaning the oven, hob or fridge, only 38% ask their cleaner to do this for them. Our ‘favourite’ jobs, incidentally, are laundry, washing-up and vacuuming.

Nine in ten customers (89%) are happy with the job their cleaner does, but when there is a problem or you feel the cleaner has missed something, some are reticent to point it out: 67% of men will mention it directly, compared with only 57% of women.

A few (3%) will leave a note. However, 37% of women don’t say a word (29% of men); most say they don’t want to offend.

It’s indicative of the often complex and awkward relationship we have with those who clean for us, says Lucy Lethbridge, author of Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth Century Britain. Is women’s reticence down to guilt? Possibly, she says.

"I wonder if men feel this guilt? I think it’s a deep-rooted female response – we still have one foot in the domestic world, don’t we?

"I have a cleaner and I suffer from guilt; I find it very embarrassing to be sitting at my computer when the vacuum cleaner is going, and it’s really quite a small flat.

"But at the same time, my cleaner really needs the work."

In some ways, Lucy says, it was easier for previous generations, before the dawn of class mobility in the late 19th century.

"Fundamentally, people accepted that the middle and upper classes had to be served, and at the very top there was a leisured class that looked after you because they were the establishment, and in return you looked after them," she adds.

For her book, Lucy interviewed a former lady’s maid to the Duchess of Marlborough who had 30 years’ service, and was struck by her acceptance that there was a ruling class and a serving class.

These days, she points out, class structures are more fluid and it’s a more transitory system where cleaners come and go – especially in cities, which makes having a non-awkward relationship between cleaner and employer more challenging. But it’s clearly not impossible, as our respondents report.

But for those who don’t fancy the idea of a cleaner, yet also don’t like cleaning, take heart from Quentin Crisp’s take on his own rather laissez-faire approach to cleaning his house.

"After the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse," he wrote.