Cleaning Guilt

We've been without our house cleaner for four weeks now. Miraculously we are not mired in filth. The kitchen is clean, the laundry is done, and the floor has been regularly swept. The bathrooms are starting to look like they could use the attention, but my laziness has proclaimed that with one week until her return, they can wait.

I feel horrifyingly guilty, still, about employing someone to clean my home. My mother never did. But then, my mother didn't work when she had a toddler, and by the time she did start working full time I was 12 years old and cleaned the bathrooms for her. It's a different world, and a different time, and I need to stop comparing myself to a life that's 30 years old and which doesn't in any way mirror my own. 

But then aside from the "I don't measure up to my mother despite the fact that our lives at this stage are not comparable" guilt, I have even more guilt about having someone clean my house because it smacks of servantry and colonialism and I am but a product of our school system which convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that class systems and colonialism are Bad. Not just Bad, but BAD. 

And I'm not saying that's untrue, of course it is. The fact that my British ancestors used to routinely walk into other societies and take them over with no concern about their culture and their learning and their way of life is atrocious. 

But I think perhaps that employing a cleaning lady is a tad different. And not just because she's as white as I am.

No, I think the guilt comes more from the fact that this particular cleaning lady is more educated than I am. She's a doctor, from Russia. Yes, a doctor. And she comes once a week to clean my bathrooms. Her English is awful; we communicate largely by email, I suspect because her sons translate for her. And I feel terrible that she has come to our country -- a country in desperate need of doctors, might I add -- and she cannot seem to find a way to learn enough English to take the exams she might need to get qualification to practice. 

Is this my fault? Of course not. Is cleaning the only job she can get? Probably, given that most jobs require you to be able to communicate clearly. Are we paying her fairly? Absolutely; we're paying more than she asked for, because we have three cats and a toddler, and we felt what she asked for didn't accurately compensate her for the huge amount of work she'd find each week. In cat hair alone, especially in the summer, we can drown. I suppose in many ways it's good we're giving her some well-paying (if nasty) work so she can find those english classes, pay rent, buy food, and otherwise live until she can start practicing.

(If she can; Canadian terms for qualifying foreign-trained doctors not being exactly flexible and easy.)

I am so looking forward to her return; so looking forward to coming home on a Friday night after a long week and being able to sit down with my child and read a book without looking at the floors I will spend my weekend cleaning. 

But I will still feel a twinge of guilt about it, all the same.