How To Preserve Your Privacy When You Have A Domestic Helper In Your Home
When you hire a maid to work for your family, you have an extra person in your house. She is not exactly your family member who you can share more personal moments with, but she somehow needs to be in the house 24 hours 6 or 7 days a week! How can you respect her privacy and at the same time let her understand that your privacy should be respected too?
While you respect your maid as a professional worker and let her have some personal space within her routine work, sometimes you may wonder if you seem to give away too much of your personal space. Can there be any agreeable way to maintain your personal space without allowing the maid to interfere?
Certainly, and here are some effective ways to preserve your privacy while the maid is around. Read on to find out!
1. Respecting Your Domestic Helper’s Privacy
Start with respecting her privacy first, set the right standard and respectful attitude in your house and be a role model. The first thing you can do is to not keep your helper’s personal document, such as her passport and her bank booklet. You might feel like you need to monitor your helper’s financial situation, but you must understand that she is not a child anymore, and therefore can manage her own finance.
Secondly, you should try not to bother your helper after her working hours and never bother her on her rest days. You should give her some private space to talk to her family and friends, manage her finance, rest up or do some leisure activities.
Thirdly, allow her to close her room door and never set up cameras in her room! You might feel like you need to monitor every single action of your helper but it is very wrong to do so because you are infringing upon her private space. It is also illegal to set up cameras without a reasonable excuse for doing so. Allow her to enjoy her own time off without imposing, and in turn, she will understand that she should allow you to enjoy alone time with your family. This applies to checking through her messages on her personal mobile phone. How would you feel if your employer is watching over you 24/7 or checking through your belongings?
Remember your domestic helper will also be keen on her own privacy. Respect this and don’t barge into her room without knocking and approval first. If you give her space, she will also give you yours in return knowing how important it is for you.
2. Preserving Your Privacy With A Domestic Helper At Home
You might feel like your own privacy is gone after you have hired a helper. When you want to watch television with your family then suddenly your helper comes and sits down. When you want to have an intimate conversation with your partner then suddenly your helper appears at the door and asks you whether she can go back to her room now. When you want to have some quality time with your child in the park then your helper volunteers to come with you too. In a lot of cases, this might be embarrassing to refuse her or tell her not to do it because it might appear rude and selfish. However, to nurture a healthy relationship between you and your helper, you must take these steps:
Firstly, the most useful thing you could do is set up a work schedule for your helper. It should list very clearly what is the time she should spend taking care of your children, the time she should do the household chores and when is her rest time. You should explain to her very clearly that her rest time is your family time, and also her family time as she can talk to her family back home. You can also ask her to stop minding your children the moment you arrive at home, such as, when you arrive home, your helper can say to your children, “your Mum is here, Auntie will go back to her room now!” There would be a clear boundary between her work time and her private time, and also between her work time and your family time then.
Secondly, you can tell your helper that when you don’t need her assistance with something or you will shoulder the full responsibility of taking care of your children on your days off, so she would only need to take care of the household chores. Your helper will be very grateful, and you will also be able to have some private time with your children or for yourself. The rule of the thumb is, to be honest, but kind.
Thirdly, you can give her something to do outside. For example, sometimes you may want the apartment completely for yourself. In this case, you could ask her to run an errand or take the children to the playground.
Lastly, if your helper does not like going out on her rest day because she has no friends in Singapore, or she would rather save up money and/or just want to rest up, that can be a little bit tricky. What you can do is you could sign her up for enrichment classes to improve her language, cooking or, simply even allow her to just close her room door to have her own leisure time such as watch a drama or listen to music, and even catching on up her sleep on her rest days.
Look Into Setting Good Practices
Maintaining privacy with a live-in domestic helper is not easy. Hence, while hiring a maid, keep the issue of privacy in mind to ensure that your maid’s workplace is safe for her and still feels like a home to you.
If you are in need of a full-time domestic helper from a reliable maid agency in Singapore,
let us work together with you on your selection to find the most suitable domestic help services that you need.
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