Lee Suckling: Why cleaning should be everyone’s first job

Everyone should work as a cleaner at some point in their life, writes Lee Suckling. Photo / 123rf

OPINION:

Every person I’ve ever met who has a cleaner complains about them. “They never dust the top of the cabinets!” they’ll cry. “The floors had streaks on them when I got home!”

I have a standard tongue-in-cheek reply. “You could always clean your own house?” I’ll say with a raised eyebrow, which is always met with an awkward laugh and then silence.

Admittedly, a few people are too busy to clean their own place, of course. Others, I think, simply believe cleaning is beneath them.

What’s humorous is those who don’t want to clean their own places aren’t Downton Abbey-esque gentry or anyone really all that posh. They’re middle-class professionals who have done well.

Having the surplus income to pay for a weekly clean is one of Western culture’s success signs. It tells the world, “I’ve made it! I don’t have to clean my own house!”.

As someone who kind of enjoys cleaning their own place (or at least the final result), I don’t understand the idea of cleaning your own house being less than you deserve. Who knows your house better than you? Only the people who live in an abode know the high-usage areas that need extra attention.

Further – as I see with cases of my friends who pay to have their houses cleaned – there’s middle-class guilt at play in this employer-staff dynamic. This often means they don’t actually want to ask for what they want. They just hope (or expect) that it goes unsaid.

Which is why, clearly, people seem to hate their cleaners.

At one point in everybody’s life, I think every human should have to clean another person’s house for money. It’s a vital life experience.

I’ve had two cleaning jobs, the first at university when I was an after-school cleaner, and the second when I needed to support my early writing career so I cleaned houses for $20 cash an hour.

It’s hard, physical, thankless work. You get to see how people really live. You see their mess, their smells, their nasty routines. You scrub and you sweat. You’re on your hands and knees. Sometimes you’re even watched over.

Sounds demoralising, right? It can be, but it’s also satisfying because you have true transformation powers. You walk into something disgusting and leave it beautiful.

But that’s not why I think everyone should give house cleaning a go. It is because cleaning for a living is truly how “the other half lives”. That is, half of the world cleans up after others to provide for themselves and their families.

Any professional cleaner will tell you it's often thankless work, but Lee Suckling explains why it's worth a go. Photo / 123rf

Cleaners go about this planet invisibly, when the rest of us are at work (or way after we’ve left work) and never get seen. But they are there, every day, cleaning up after us.

Every shop, café, and restaurant is serviced. Every office, train station, park, street. It’s someone’s job to clean up the filth others don’t realise they make.

Yet modern society has conditioned us to complain when anything is dirty. “Isn’t this someone’s job to clean?” we might mutter to ourselves when a shop counter is dusty, a street has rubbish on it, or the carpet in your office is covered in crumbs.

Why is the thought of cleaning up after yourself, or others, so invalidating to many people? It doesn’t mean you’ve failed or you’re unsuccessful. It means you’re conscientious. You care about your own surroundings. You take pride in maintenance.

I know what some people who hire cleaners for their homes will be reading this column. “Cleaners choose to clean! They could do something else if they wanted!”

And while that may be true, some people clean because they have no other choice. There’s also nothing wrong with that. Back in the early 20th Century, following your ancestors’ footsteps into service was admirable. It’s only because of Western upward mobility of the last 100 years that we think cleaning for a living is something for “others”.

If you’re the parent of teenagers now, you’d do well to encourage them to clean for their first job. It’s an experience that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.

It will teach them humility and pride. They’ll see tangible outcomes for their efforts and take this lesson into adulthood. It’s an experience in physical hard work, something many people today are insulated from. And the money isn’t bad when you’re just starting out in life, either.

Cleaning isn’t beneath anyone. Cleaners are the cornerstone of society. They allow everything else to function. That is something everyone should have first-hand experience with.