Lavanya

Those Pricey Maids! – GP by Shalzmojo

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Women folk have stepped up their game and have conquered the hallowed realms of corporate, academic, entrepreneurship worlds. Be it board rooms or space ships to the moon – women are everywhere and striding far ahead of their male counterpart. Yet there is one sphere where their conquests have paled in significance and they seem to be depending on another section of the sisterhood to bolster up their team.

Yup I am talking about the Maid!

From sweeping the house to cooking the food to taking care of children – maids are needed for everything. In fact they have become far more important than having a man in your life.

But with greater power comes greater responsibility! No scratch that. With greater power comes greater price tag!

I have been living on my own since two decades now and have seen the ups and downs of the maid system. In early 2000, there was an influx of maids and they were available cheaply and at any time one desired them to come in. Cut to 2010 and the maid force seems to have either shrunk in numbers or we have started hiring more than one maid to do the job.

I am a single person family unit and I have two- one for cleaning and one for cooking. Seems maids have added diversification to the game. A maid that mops and cleans is not hired to cook and vice versa.

The nuclear family living is now off setted by single living as more and more people seem to be joining this bandwagon; whether it’s because they have never married or gotten divorced/separated is the normal trend of society these days. Also there are couple who are choosing to be childfree and lead married yet single lives for personal satisfaction and career growth.

So in this setup, the need for two maids per person seems baffling – right?

I mean if there are 4-6 family members, one can understand the need to have more “womanpower” to cook clean and manage the house. A single person should be more efficient and sufficient to finish their chores by themselves.

That’s where the catch is. Empowered working women seem to have realised the value of their time and would rather engage in meaningful pursuits of academics or business running than manage household chores.

This is where the maid comes in and this is why they have suddenly become so expensive to hire. Not just that, an efficient worker who comes on time and doesn’t take too many offs is valued far more and therefore paid far more too.

Apartment buildings seem to be witnessing maid wars these days as people try to buy off a good maid with higher pay, just to make their life easier. When opportunity is this golden, the maids have surely every right to cash in and that’s whats happening these days.

In past six months, I have had hired a cook thrice as they would join initially since they didn’t have work,  but gradually they worked out more houses to work in and figured out the ones that paid higher and left mine to join more of those.

I am not sure how long this current one will last till I start searching for another one again. But one thing is for sure, even though I love to cook, I need daily help to assist in the cooking chores. And yes I am ready to pay a little more to have this additional help to ease my life.

I wonder if you do agree with me on this? Whats your take on the importance of a maid in your life?

About Shalzmojo

An interior designer by profession, writing is a passion which coupled with travel love blossomed into this blog where I love to just “do my thing”! Be it recipes, food events, travel jaunts, fiction dreaming or even meditative musings; all of it’s taken up quite passionately on my blog. I am a serious wine guzzler and love to chase butterflies in my free time.

Pls do check out my post on a sustainable living

This post is written for the December bloghop #mymojo with Shalzmojo

Linking up for #wordsante with Namysaysso for every post deserves some love

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26 comments

  2. Har ghar ki kahani hai yeh toh! I faced many problems with frequently changing maids when I was in Bangalore and living with friends in a flat. Frequent leaves and sometimes they never showed up for a week altogether without prior intimation, it was only in the last year of my stay in Bangalore that we found our perfect maid! We need not tell her anything as her work was better than ours! But yes, I know and relate to what you want to convey here! Living without a man is possible, but not without a maid 😛

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  5. Had a great tongue and cheek read Shalini! I remember a phase of life wherein the number of house help employed at my end out numbered the members in our family! And inspite of that one day would arise when all will be on leave!!!!

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  6. Maids have become a necessity for an urban these days. Everyone would have their highs and lows with them but they hold a lot of importance in every house 🙂

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  7. A day without a maid means chaos in the house. The days they are absent are the days when we realize how heavily we depend on them. This was an interesting post as we’ve not yet faced the issue of maids changing every now and then. Our maid has been with us for 3 years now, so far so good, I guess 😀

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  8. Oh yes, Shalz, you are so right about good maids becoming a rarity these days. And, they know how much we depend on them, so they love to have the upper hand in so many things. And, also the choice – whether to work for you, or for someone who pays more than you.

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  9. Maids are the backbone of our societies because like you I believe it is better to have a maid to do the housework rather than waste precious and more productive time doing routine chores. That said, the paucity of maids is more felt in large metros mainly because there are more low level jobs that uneducated or lesser educated women can do. No longer is housekeeping or nursemaiding the only option for women. And I do agree that you need more than one maid. My household of 6 adults and two grandchildren who come and go, survives on 1 full time, 1 part time and still need to outsource several jobs. Yet I land up doing the washing (albeit with a machine), shopping and double up as a chauffeur, banker and general dogsbody…..

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  10. Haha… I loved the post, you hit the cord so right. Maids – I remember a meme doing rounds on social media recently – Forget diamonds dear husband, gift me a NICE maid. lol
    House Helps are really part of life today as no one has enough time to waste on unproductive things. For us (family of 3) more then work it’s like she is a habit now. Have been seeing her since 6 yrs every morning, despite of her many impromptu Church visits or village calls – she is part of us. Lucky for sure… but she is a rare catch 😉

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