#hell the mid-30s couple who choose to spend their disposable income on a cleaning service because they'd rather not clean are not your enem

[harbingrs]

A big part of it is also moralising "hard work" versus "laziness" in a way that's distinctly capitalist and ableist.

To illustrate: I'm disabled, but could manage to cook and clean for myself until I started working full time. I had two options: leave that job for unstable part-time work in order to cook and clean for myself again, or hire a regular cleaner and eat pre-prepared food.

I took the latter option. My financial situation and long-term stability was significantly better, and by hiring a local cleaning service, some of that increased income was also flowing on to a local business owner who was providing me with that service. Why would it be morally superior for that not to happen?

And even when people talk about "buying local" and "support local business" and "community", somehow that goes out the window when it comes to cleaning or cooking services.

Why? Because it's "lazy". Because bootstraps. Because people would see me turning down full-time work as lazy and see me using a cleaning service to enable me to do full-time work as lazy. The only "correct" option is to buck up and do it yourself.

It's impossible to separate from capitalist propaganda, and it's impossible to separate from the traditional "responsibility" for domestic work falling to women - that unless it's a class signifier, it's a failure to do what one should be doing in life.

I don't think it is really is about genuine ethical concerns around domestic work as inherently exploitative. That's why people aren't campaigning against exploitative working conditions or wages - they're attacking the person paying for a cleaning service, the lazy person who's too entitled to do the work themselves.

Somehow, we all got the message confused - that the moral issue with rich people is their laziness, their lack of hard work. Not the hoarding of wealth and unwillingness to share that wealth with the people who generate it or otherwise enable their lifestyle. This is such a common misconception, especially around things like "passive income" when we talk about landlords and investors and moguls, as if the ethical problem is that they aren't working hard enough. It's so easy to fall into the trap of moralising work in a way that's just Capitalism 2.0 and leaves disabled people out to dry.

When I was paying a cleaner 15% of my total income so I could manage to keep my job, that is not equivalent to a billionaire paying a cleaner the same hourly rate, while also refusing to pay the employees who generate their billions a living wage.

The majority of cleaning services are local businesses - either small businesses or owner-operators. If you can pay for their services, and pay them fairly, doing so is a good thing.

You don't have to be disabled or unable to clean for yourself in order to use a cleaning service, either. Just like you can still eat at a restaurant if you're able to cook for yourself. It is not morally bad or lazy or inherently exploitative not to do everything for yourself.

(For those who need the help and can't afford it, I know how frustrating it can be. I'm in that situation again now. I acknowledge how difficult that is. It can seem like such an enormous privilege to have the ability to pay for help - but it is also very, very far from "eat the rich" territory.

The majority of people using domestic/household services are working class people just trying to manage their lives. They may be elderly or disabled, or they may be busy working parents, or single parents, or they may be juggling multiple jobs, and it's more financially viable for them to outsource cleaning than to reduce their own work hours.

Not doing something yourself is a morally neutral thing for everybody - disabled and non-disabled people. Otherwise it can't be morally neutral for any of us.)

I guess friendly reminder that you can't actually judge someone's socioeconomic status based on what they own and the classic republican "they can't be poor they own a smart phone/computer" argument doesn't suddenly stop being complete out of touch nonsense when a poor person makes it.

Anyway insert "y'all can't be trusted to eat the rich bcs you'll target taco bell shift leaders and people with playstations instead of actual billionaires" post here.