Looking for a New Cleaning Lady

[onionsoupmix]

In this here article, some dude named Bentzion Elisha from Crown Heights tells us his very sad and woeful tale of how the Evil Spanish-Speaking Cleaning Lady robbed his family of their precious jewelry. Their items were returned to them, but it was still quite traumatic for the poor dears.

After the heart-wrenching story, Bentzion asks his readers

Comments

[livelife73]

let's remember YOU are part of YOUR community, so it isn't ALL bad ;)
And for the record, if by your community you mean Chabad, I just want to go on record here saying that I love the Chabad family in my community. I am going there for first Seder. I have known them for almost 20 years. I just wanted you to know, maybe you should move here :)

I have only had a cleaner (I refuse to use the term cleaning 'lady') under these circumstances:

-when I was a single parent of 2 and going to school full time
-really sick from a pregnancy, for pesach cleaning
-working one full time and one part time job with a hubby, two kids at home and pregnant
-after I had surgery
-after I had my c section in January this year

I do think that if some people choose to have a cleaner, we shouldn't judge them. Some people are organizationaly challenged and need the help.
Some people are elderly and need the assistance.

I do sometimes think the same as you "let's clean up our own crap". I think that (especially in North America) the need to have bigger homes, bigger families and more 'stuff' has necessitated the need for a cleaner.
I live in a modest home (ok SMALL), and am raising 3 children.
I am sure if you look back to North American families one, two and three generations ago, you will see they were raising their families in smaller homes, less clothing, one car (or no car). Now mind you, most families had a stay at home mother. But the world was a smaller place, less travel, less electronics, less keeping up with the Jones'. I could be wrong but that is what my experiences and stories from my grandparents and inlaws have told me. For example, instead of sitting on the internet while having my coffee every morning, I could be doing laundry and scrubbing floors :P

p.s. I also have had jewelry stolen by a cleaning lady and so has my friend

[mrn613]

Hmmmm in the good old days, people had MORE help than they do today, not less help. Before WWII, there were many young girls who had no other source of income besides cleaning. And many older women, widows and divorcees, who had no other source of income besides taking in laundry or cooking. some of these women didn't receive any salary besides room and board or a fraction of the food they would cook for other people.

Plus, the homes in which your grandparents lived was probably filthy and their clothes stank. In the good old days before vacuums, you only shook out your carpets once per year. And you had two sets of clothes, one of which was wool and couldn't be washed even if you wanted it washed.

Cleaning lady or no cleaning lady, I'm not going back to good old days, thank you very much.

[livelife73]

I didn't call them the good old days. I wouldn't go back there either, but more for reasons of sexism, anti-semitism, racism, homophobia, etc.

MY grandparents DIDN'T have help, neither did their friends. My family and MOST families, especially during the depression did not have help. My family happen to immigrate and settle in the praries of Canada. My grandmother crocheted her own clothing and had to go to work as a teacher the second she was old enough. The same was true for my other grandmother, she had to go to work as a nurse as soon as she was old enough.
And I am sure if you asked most people, their grandarents didn't have live in help, well at least the people I am speaking to and am surrounded by, and I can only go by what I have learned in my life, and I am sure the same goes for you. I have never heard that from any of my grandparents generation, unless they lived in South Africa. I am not sure where you are getting your information from, mine is from what I have gained through my education, my families stories and experiences as well as people in the community. Most of our grandparents were immigrants right? Who came with nothing and had no help.
"The homes in which your grandparents lived was probably filthy and their clothes stank" ummmmmmm no, are you refering to our great great great grandparents?

[conundrum1]

My great-grandparents also settled in the Praries! They lived in rural Alberta.

None of my relatives had cleaning help, whether in Canada, Israel or Eastern Europe. Who had money for that? They were more focussed on the essentials, like food and shelter.

I somehow doubt that my grandparents' homes stank. It may not have had the pleasant smell of chemicals, but there are natural cleaning solutions (baking soda, vinegar, water and soap....).

[mrn613]

Ha ha you've got to be kidding if you think you are the expert in this area.

Women who didn't finish high school and couldn't work as teachers or nurses, what did they do? That's right, they cleaned and took in laundry. When you are a teenage girl and you live in a cold-water flat with 10 other people or you live on a farm with 10 other people, you cook and clean.

And yes, your grandparents' homes stank. What did they heat with, coal? Wood? Ever smell burning coal? It stinks, and the coal dust and coal smoke get everywhere. That's why we don't use it to heat our homes anymore. and what were they using to light their homes, kerosene? gas? these also used to contain a lot of sulphur and smelled really bad when they burned.

Not to mentioned, they used horse-hide glue to attach wallpaper and horsehair insulation in the walls. And after a few years, it decomposes and stinks. Let's see what else was stinking. How about chamber pots? People with no deoderant who didn't wash their clothing? You know that after a couple of weeks of no bathing, you get a thick oily coating on your skin and hair that smells too?

[onionsoupmix]

Unless you are much, much older than me, you are talking about our great-great-great grandparents and not our grandparents. My grandparents lived after electricity and running water and bathrooms were invented.

[mrn613]

Hmmm one of my grandmothers came here from rural Russia with neither parent when she was 12 and lived in a tenemant with her older siblings as their live-in babsitter. She married my grandfather who was also raised by an older sister on the LES when she was 18 in order to escape and became a milliner.

One of my grandfathers was raised on a subsistence farm in upstate NY because his parents were starving during the depression on the lower east side. His sister is still alive and says they used outhouses and took in boarders in some wooden bungalows they built on their property, and she had to clean and cook for them. His wife was born in Romania and came here when she was 3 years old. She never went to school and didn't know how to read and write in English, only Yiddish. They got married when she was an old-maid when she was 26. They ran a corner-store together in Trenton NJ. And, they lived in a really stinky attached house with coal heat!

running water

[glowing_flower]

My grandmother on one side did not get running water in her house until well into her married life. And I'm not much older than you. It depends on where you lived. And yes, I'm talking about the good old U.S. of A.