All About Life Without Maids
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Wat abt before and after school care. A few of my friends who are ftwm with no maid, place their kids in the before and after sch care centres.
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Tough, I reached home after 7.30. I know a few child care centre close at 7pm. Sometimes I even need to entertain customers at night. Travelling also required occasionally. It’s still best to have support at home. Sigh!! When will ever see the light at the end of the tunnel???!!!
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This forum is a real godsend. I too am contemplating to take the plunge and do without a maid so this is really helpful. I just hope I can manage. Am currently a full-time mum with 4 kids 2 to 11yo, 1 dog and hubby who frequently travels. My main problem is cooking. I'm a dreadful cook. Any ideas how to overcome this? My last resort wld be tingkat. Cleaning is ok with me (just close 1 eye to mess). Like most pple here, I too feel that the trouble with hiring a domestic help who's not much help, is not worth the trouble anymore. Better to do things myself without any heartache yah?
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peapot:
Tough, I reached home after 7.30. I know a few child care centre close at 7pm. Sometimes I even need to entertain customers at night. Travelling also required occasionally. It's still best to have support at home. Sigh!! When will ever see the light at the end of the tunnel???!!!
I put my kid in child care lor. But I knock off at 5.30pm to pick him everyday. For the past two years, there were less than 8 days on which I picked him later than 6.30pm. So it would be a huge problem if u can't pick your child before the centre closes.
One of my colleagues circumvented this by getting a fellow parent to help her. This colleague can never pick her kid before the centre closes. So she network around and made friends with a fellow parent whose kid was in the same childcare centre. This fellow parent then help her to pick her kid, park him at her home (which is a few block away), shower and feed him dinner. By the time my colleague picks her kid up at 7.30pm, the kid has had dinner and showered. No $ involved in this case because the other parent would sometimes park her girl at my colleague's place. So it's a mutually beneficial situation. -
Next year, I will be cooking 1 dish meals…soup with vege and meat. So it’s actually 3-in-1. Hate the cleaning/washing up. Clothes will have smell too. Lunch will be simple since it’s just for my daughter and me…son longer day in school.
No maid, body aches after housework.
With maid, heart ache PLUS headache. -
janet_lee88:
Next year, I will be cooking 1 dish meals...soup with vege and meat. So it's actually 3-in-1. Hate the cleaning/washing up. Clothes will have smell too. Lunch will be simple since it's just for my daughter and me...son longer day in school.
No maid, body aches after housework.
With maid, heart ache PLUS headache.
Actually my maid & I get along very well... Of course she did not clean as well as me, but no maid is perfect. I would love to renew her contract but she's been here for too long & her parents wanted her to go home
If she ever wants to return, I'd take her back. But it's too much of a hassle to get a totally new helper.
So far, I've only cooked one dish meals or reheat frozen items that my maid cooked for me before she left! :evil:
I bought a vertical freezer and got her to freeze our favourite dishes. We joked that the supply will last till she visits us next year. She's like family and we're hoping she can visit us annually.
My siblings & parents have also offered to cook for us if required. I'll likely freeze those too. Yup, I'm \"frozen\" queen. Picked up the habit when I studied overseas. -
AND more privacy!!! Something I’ve missed all this while.
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janet_lee88:
Give yourself time to adjust. You can actually wash clothes at night after dinner and hang up to dry and bring out to the sun in the morning. Collect by mid morning or early afternoon. That way, your kitchen will be free of clothes when you cook lunch or dinner.Next year, I will be cooking 1 dish meals...soup with vege and meat. So it's actually 3-in-1. Hate the cleaning/washing up. Clothes will have smell too. Lunch will be simple since it's just for my daughter and me...son longer day in school.
No maid, body aches after housework.
With maid, heart ache PLUS headache.
Exercise in the morning 3x a week will free you from aches and pain. Go for a body massage or foot reflexology once a month or fortnightly. It helps to rejuvenate your body. The monthly salary for the maid can now be used to pamper yourself. -
Great idea! Will check out the 1 dish thread. Now need to look thru the threads to see which robotic cleaner to get…
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I am currently living abroad. When I was in Singapore, I didn’t have a live-in helper, though I did have lots of help from family and we also hired a part-time cleaner. Now I am totally alone and totally without help. I don’t even have a roomba!
I have to cook, clean and take care of my family. Hubby does little coz he has long hours. It’s exhausting, so I rope the kids in. They help with the laundry and dishes. The house is dirtier (it’s a bigger place than what we had in Singapore too!) but I just have to close one eye. I will clean parts of a small area each day coz it’s impossible to do everything, eg today I wash the toilet bowl, tmrw I clean the sink, another day I clean the floor etc. Some things never get cleaned (eg windows…).
As for food, I try to cook extra to freeze so I don’t have to cook so many meals. I also use the crock pot a lot. So I will prepare dinner in the morning when the older kids are at school and the baby is napping. The crockpot will slowly cook it while I go driving up and down to pick the kids up etc.
I must say that the dryer has really helped my life. I used to spend so much time hanging the clothes to dry. And I could only do one load at a time coz gotta wait for the previous load to dry. Now I can do one load after another. And it saves me so much time. I put the bed sheets in and when it’s done I put the bed sheets back on the bed. No need to spend time folding!
It’s tiring but the other mums here manage. They even have time to put their make-up on to go out. and some also work (i don’t), so I think we are a bit spoilt by all the help we get in Singapore. I’m the most frazzled looking mum on the street! The other mums must be thinking Singaporean mums are little princesses!
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