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I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket. I see cleaning your own home, as well as other
by hsnv 4mo ago
I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket.
I see cleaning your own home, as well as other chores (dishes, laundry) as an act of self-hygiene. If you want a robot to do your chores, that gives me the same feeling as desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you etc.
Of course these are not apples to oranges, but I can't shake the feeling that you lose something about being a living, breathing being when you give up these mundane chores.
- hansonkd 4mo agoIn general once or twice a month cleaners aren't hired to "tidy up", they deep clean. a bit like the difference of brushing your teeth and going to a hygienist.
- sublinear 4mo agoI think the point still stands for the type of nerd on HN. Deep cleaning isn't that hard and, for now, it's relatively inexpensive. There are still only a handful of products where price gouging has occurred due to influencer marketing. All that needs to happen is another "Tide Pods" type of incident for Amazon to ban commercial cleaning supplies or anything with an SDS. Of course we make the robots do dirty work in this future, and boom you've got another form of surveillance threatening the 4th amendment. "What's the matter bro? Tryin' to clean up a murder scene or what? huh huh huh"
- ramses0 4mo agoHousekeeper. House Cleaner. The first organizes things and may do the laundry or put away groceries or something. I wouldn't know for certain, as my income doesn't yet reach to those heady heights. The second vacuums, mops, cleans bathrooms, etc.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoBut, to have a House Cleaner, you must do the Housekeeping. House Cleaner is not going to vacuum around your piles of dirty laundry.
- DANmode 4mo agoSome will, but the levels of disrespect required toward one’s employee - and oneself - required, is quite high.
- ShowalkKama 4mo ago>If you want a robot to do your chores you mean like a dishwasher or a washing machine?
- Lammy 4mo agoYou are confusing letting a machine make decisions about what needs to be done with using a machine to remove toil from the things I have decided.
- bluGill 4mo agoI'm sure when these came out someone was thinking that they think about what stains to remove.
- MattGaiser 4mo agoI guess I am mostly intrigued that those lists would differ greatly with respect to cleaning.
- ehsankia 4mo agoNo? The only different between these robots and a washing machine is that in theory, the robot is generalist and can do many tasks, whereas a washing or laundry machine can only do one task. You can still in theory fully control what task the robot works on. Also, in theory, the robot would be the glue between all the other machines, like filling up the washing machine, then moving it to the dryer, etc. It deciding what to do isn't a "prerequisite" for the robot.
- reaperducer 4mo agoMaybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket. I knew a middle-aged waitress who had a cleaning woman come in every week or two. After being on her feet for 10 hours dealing with jerks in a diner six days a week, she was too tired to do more than basic cleaning. The price was well worth it to her.
- bluGill 4mo agoThe real question isn't how much money you have when in the middle class, it is what will you give up. I have hired cleaners and I love the time savings, but it isn't worth it to me so I almost never do.
- NikolaNovak 4mo agoI don't think it's a tax bracket thing, or even necessarily a culture/upbringing thing --> I was brought up white-collar working middle class -ish (Eastern European middle-class, which probably doesn't map cleanly to North American middle class; buying a bottle of coke was a Birthday thing), but then was refugee from a civil war for a while, with the appropriate tax bracket. And my grandma certainly instilled much of the same sense in me :) Thing is, today, as an adult, I'm painfully aware that I'm mortal and life is limited and time is the most precious resource available to me. I'm not religious so I don't believe in after-life reward for being a good boy either. So I'm a little bit more mindful / little less self-flagellating, than I used to be, about these things. For myself in particular: * Yes, I shower and wipe my own bottom :) * I am the dishes and laundry queen in my family, though I definitely use laundry machine (curious where that would fit in your matrix btw? :) * I don't mind the act of lawn mowing but I absolutely resent the randomness of it - at some point north american society decided that we/they will 1. Adopt a very specific fast growing grass for ALL the lawns and 2. Having it more than ~5cm long is an affront to man and god and neighbourhood alike. Why they haven't just culturally picked cloverleaf or something is beyond me * I like organizing my living space but I get zero sense of satisfaction out of vacuuming, dusting, and general maintenance. Many other people love it! In turn though, they probably get zero need to constantly rearchitect their home network like I do :-> In sum - I personally put laundry machine and auto-vacuum in very different category than showers and wiping bottoms, but if you lump them together, much power to you, though I don't think it's a tax bracket thing necessarily :)
- bluGill 4mo agoI have a bidet to help wipe my bottom... It isn't enough that I can skip wiping completely, but it greatly reduces that chore. I sometimes dream of being rich enough to afford a servant to do this for me. But realistically even if I was that rich I wouldn't subject someone to that indignity.
- ryandrake 4mo agoThe way I see it is: My time is worth $0 unless I'd otherwise be earning money. So if you're an hourly contract worker, and you would otherwise be billing $100/hr to write code or something, then it makes sense to pay a gardener to mow your lawn and a plumber to fix your toilet, as long as it's less than you're making. But instead, if you'd otherwise just be doom scrolling on your phone or jerking off, you might as well mow that lawn yourself. Paying someone any amount of money is a waste. I pretty much DIY everything around the house. I work hard for my money, and it feels lazy and wasteful to just ship it off to someone else to do what I am fully capable of doing myself. Maybe when I'm 80 and have trouble walking, I'll pay someone to move furniture around or wash my roof. But not while I'm able bodied.
- jrmg 4mo agoI thought the same until we started getting our house cleaned every two weeks. It’s so freeing. It feels well worth even a few hours of my work to pay for the time of the (so efficient) cleaners. So much better value than things most people don’t think twice about paying for (streaming services, faster Internet, a nice car, etc…)
- nlh 4mo agoI'll take it one step further - we have a 2-year-old toddler and recently I realized that I was spending a full, solid, real 1-1.5 hours per day doing the same kitchen & play area clean-up. Every day. No matter how hard I tried, the daily chaos of my wife & I working from home, preparing meals, and our family spending time in this part of the house meant it just needed this work. I hired a lovely person recently who comes to the house for exactly that hour a day every day and now does this task for us. It's the most "luxury" labor service I've ever hired, and it, easily and without question, the best use of $$ I have ever spent on a service. I have an extra hour to hang with the family now and our kitchen & play area are now fully reset and spotless every night when we go to bed and every morning when we wake up. It's not streaming service cheap, and I'm thankful that my business can generate enough $ to allow me to pay for this service, but man is it freeing and wonderful.
- bayarearefugee 4mo agoI can see the charm in hiring a cleaning person you trust, but I personally wouldn't extend that to paying a faceless corporation to send a robot to do it. I'd much rather pay a nice human significantly more money than have it done by a stinking robot.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoThe real cause is that you and your wife never learned how to keep house. I'm in the same boat. My house is cluttered. Not like hoarder bad but stuff just piles up. I've been a guest where the house is always neat and everything is put away. The hosts just never let anything get out of place. Everything they own has a place and it always goes back there immediately after its used. They maintain this organized well kept home almost effortlessly, because they were taught how to do it at a young age by parents who were the same way. Whereas for me, it would take me several dedicated hours a day to get everything picked up and put away.
- sailfast 4mo agoI would love for a robot to wipe me after using the toilet - and I have a washlet for this! It’s not about tax bracket. You can still pay your cleaning folks a reasonable wage and be kind to them. You can still treat them like human beings. It’s vulnerable to have another person tidy up after you, but fine in the end. Turns out vacuuming isn’t really that personal. It’s one thing to have NEVER done the mundane chores and entirely another to save some time in your day while you’re at work to have someone help with it.
- lostlogin 4mo agoThis got disturbing pretty quickly. Scatology meets HN.
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoIt's like the family guy episode: "Dad we're putting you in a nursing home" "I don't wanna" "Dad, there's people where who'll wipe your ass for you" "Louis pack your things"
- joenot443 4mo agoDo you consider a dishwasher to be a robot that does your chores?
- trollbridge 4mo agoA robot that could wipe after using the toilet (admittedly fairly easy with modern-day powered bidets), clean someone up, help them shower, etc. would actually be a really big deal for care of the elderly. Currently this is a job a human has to do. It would allow elderly to regain a certain amount of independence. Often they start having trouble with just 1 or 2 of these tasks, but then a home health aide is needed or they have to get put in a nursing home. The cost of this kind of care is $5000 - $20k a month. So there's a lot of money on the table for a good robot.
- robots0only 4mo agoAny robot that does this reliably is easily more than a decade away.
- falcor84 4mo agoDid you mean that to sound distant? Because my reading is that if we have robots reliably doing these sorts of delicate tasks in a decade or two, it would be amazingly revolutionary and disruptive to the economy.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- VladVladikoff 4mo agoAs long as it hits before my kids have to wipe my elderly ass I’m golden.
- cmrdporcupine 4mo agoI mean, they kind of owe it to us. I changed a lot of diapers.
- taneq 4mo agoIt depends, really.
- TZubiri 4mo agoPresumably they feel more empowered, like an elephant must feel when a flock of birds are grooming them.
- dnnddidiej 4mo agoNot everyone has the time or energy to do it. I estimate 10-20 hrs of chores a week for 2 adults 2 kids. Having cleaners is a nice touch when both parents work.
- signatoremo 4mo agoYou are the minority - [0] According to that article: - The global cleaning services market is predicted to grow to roughly $482 billion in 2026 and $859 billion by 2030 with a 7.5% annual growth rate. - There are over 1.4+ million cleaners currently employed in the U.S. - The U.S. janitorial services market is worth $112 billion, with 1+ million cleaning businesses as of 2026. - The average annual pay for a cleaning business owner in the U.S. is $127,973 a year. - The average annual salary for a house cleaner in the U.S is $35,034. - 73% of cleaning business owners expect revenue growth in 2026. - 55% of cleaning businesses raised prices in the last 12 months. - 41% of households use recurring cleaning services, as customers shift from one-time bookings to weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly plans. [0] - https://www.getjobber.com/academy/cleaning/cleaning-industry-trends/ https://www.getjobber.com/academy/cleaning/cleaning-industry...
- not_a_bot_4sho 4mo ago> You are in the minority ... 41% of households use recurring cleaning services ... Wouldn't that put OP in the majority?
- quietbritishjim 4mo agoIf 41% of households are actively employing a cleaner then it seems very likely that more than 50% would be happy to have their home cleaned if only they could afford it (as opposed to the commenter starting this thread, who seems to see household cleaning as a positive part of their life).
- yen223 4mo agoHow big of a bubble do you have to be in to be thinking "I like cleaning" is the majority position among normal people?
- DANmode 4mo agoIs it “I like cleaning”, or “I benefit from knowing some moron didn’t come flood the cracks of my floors and wood cabinetry, creating mold”? Yet to come across pros doing it better than me, means I don’t hire pros yet.
- userbinator 4mo agoFor me, it's the invasiveness and lack of agency; your house is the most private space in your life. At least if I do the cleaning myself, there won't be anyone else to blame for things broken or gone missing.
- derektank 4mo agoI would absolutely purchase a robotic tool that brushes my teeth for me. I’m sure it would be much better I am at cleaning my teeth. I already use an electric toothbrush and a waterpik for exactly this reason.
- fragmede 4mo agoAutobrush! https://tryautobrush.com/ https://tryautobrush.com/
- fhub 4mo agoI outsource a bunch of things in life. Different things at different stages of life. Some of those things I have outsourced I don’t dislike doing myself. But often it comes down to freeing up time and, to some extent, keeping money flowing back to people in my community.
- ian_holt 4mo agoUnfortunately, we seem to lose more than we really gain, much of the time. Often it is 'sold' to us as 'convenient' but, I suspect, more often than not we don't gain that much
- jcgrillo 4mo agoAbout as strange as letting someone else work on your car. Some people can do it without any discomfort. Could not be me.
- BeetleB 4mo ago> brush your teeth for you aka electric toothbrush > wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet aka a bidet (or a toilet seat with a bidet) > robot to bathe you aka a shower > dishes aka a dishwasher > laundry aka a washer If you want to do stuff yourself, use a manual toothbrush, learn how to wash your own clothes without a washer (people do this all the time, BTW), wash your own dishes without a dishwasher, don't use dry cleaning services, and use a bucket to take a bath. Also, don't use a vacuum cleaner.
- BeetleB 4mo ago> brush your teeth for you aka electric toothbrush > wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet aka a bidet (or a toilet seat with a bidet) > robot to bathe you aka a shower > dishes aka a dishwasher > laundry aka a washer If you want to do stuff yourself, use a manual toothbrush, learn how to wash your own clothes without a washer (people do this all the time, BTW), wash your own dishes without a dishwasher, don't use dry cleaning services, and use a bucket to take a bath. Also, don't use a vacuum cleaner. > but I can't shake the feeling that you lose something about being a living, breathing being when you give up these mundane chores. Say that when you have 3 kids, and cook most of the meals (i.e. no takeouts).
- margalabargala 4mo ago> don't use dry cleaning services I agree with the rest of your comment but fuck dry cleaning services. Who does dry cleaning regularly?
- NewsaHackO 4mo agoI could be completely wrong about this, but I think a lot of women causal clothing specifically recommend dry cleaning, compared to men (unless you are in a field that wear suits everyday).
- l23k4 4mo agoThis is maybe sort of true, but few garments that say "dry clean only" actually need to be dry cleaned. This has typically more to do with laziness on the part of the manufacturers. Things like lining, interfacing and structure are often strong indicators that a garment actually has to be dry-cleaned. I think those are at best only very slightly more common in women's casual clothing.
- jasonfarnon 4mo agoMaybe things have changed but finances mostly forced my kids and those in the neighborhood to grow up this way. No dishwasher, bidet (we're in the US anyway), electric toothbrush, and definitely cooked all meals. Maybe takeout pizza or chinese every couple months? Is this really so outlandish to you?
- imhoguy 4mo agoI am quite similar but this will be inevitable when I get old: > desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you My (EU) country is heading demographic catastrophe, so either I die in my feces or robots help me with hygiene. Meanwhile I plan to downsize my home to reduce todays chores.
- raincole 4mo ago> tax bracket From late 19th to early 20th centuries, it was common for British workers to hire charwomen to clean their places. Domestic service was the most typical job for women by the time. Historically it wasn't really something exclusive for the rich.
- krisoft 4mo agoDo you feel the same way about walking? If you wanted to get anywhere on land pre Bronze age your only option was to walk. Then we started riding horses, later we invented carriages, much much later bicycles, cars, and airplanes. Do these also take away something about being a living, breathing being? Do you feel that your life is lessened by these options? A different question is. Imagine that you are living with a partner and you agree on a distribution of labour. Let’s say you do the hunting and your partner cleans the house. They are happy with the agreement and fully consent to it. Do you feel it takes away from you being a living, breathing being?