The Cleaner

 

Cleaner in Italy? Photo by Antonia Scott.



From the loungeroom window of my apartment in Milan I overlook the kitchen area of a four story mansion, where the cleaner/cook/dog walker seems to spend most of his time. This morning, at 9:30, I saw him arrive and start moving around the kitchen. While putting out my washing at about 10am I saw him randomly pop up in one of the 17 windows that face my apartment and imagined him making a bed in one of the rooms. At around 1pm he put on a burgundy coat and white gloves and carried plates of food from the kitchen into an unknown dining room of diners. He does all this with a beautiful white Labrador attentively and adoringly watching every move.

After pondering the significance of the burgundy coat and white gloves I got to thinking about a social norm here in Milan - hiring a cleaner. Everyone I know in Milan has a cleaner. Whether you rent or own your own apartment or villa you have a cleaner.

No one I know in Australia has a cleaner.

This got me wondering why a lot of Italians have cleaners while few Australians do.Personally, I have a natural/social resistance to hiring a cleaner. Growing up in a relatively working class environment in Australia where my mother worked full time and brought up two kids, along with keeping home, having a cleaner was always something I'd seen as excessive for the likes of us and reserved only for the uber rich, celebs, kings, queens etc. As I'd got older I'd decided that it wasn't too indulgent when you hit your 40s to treat yourself to a cleaner once a fortnight - a reward for all the hard work you'd put in; a justifiable expense, if you could afford it.

My resistance to having a cleaner may relate back to life lessons during my upbringing? It was filled with mumisms like "clean up after yourself", "do you think your socks are going to pick themselves up?", "I'm not your maid", "this room looks like a pigsty" "what did your last slave die of?" I'm sure there were even some Victorianisms at the root of it all like "cleanliness is next to godliness", "a place for everything everything in its place", "Saturday's child works hard for a living", "a penny saved is a penny earned" and my mother's slightly altered favourite "a family that cleans together stays together". Somewhere along the line I'd also picked up "cleaning is good for the soul".

The result? I now thoroughly believe that there are emotional, educational and financial benefits to gain from cleaning your own house, though I don't know what they are, and I completely detest the idea of having someone else doing my dirty work - I almost feel like I'd be cheating if I did, though I'm not too sure who I'd be cheating.

Another element which no doubt plays a part of my anti-cleaner stance is my high regard for privacy, especially in my home. I literally, cringe at the thought of a cleaner airing my dirty laundry. The idea of someone in my home cleaning my dirt and going through my belongings, even if just to clean them, makes me feel odd.

Why do I feel so strange about having a cleaner when it is so normal here? Is it just another consequence of being a stranieri "stranger" in Italy or am I just strange?

Perhaps I'm just an internationista.