Keeping a home, even a small one, perfectly clean is next to impossible.

Which is my justification for barely trying.

But for those who do, the who and the how can get complicated.

In this story, one woman disagrees with her parents’ decision not to hire a cleaning lady. Let’s see how it all plays out.

AITA for refusing to help my mom with deep cleaning the house?

For some cultural context: I (F32) live with my parents (F60 and M64).

In my culture, it’s totally normal for adults to live in multigenerational households, and most people don’t move out until they get married, if they move out at all.

Once we start working, it’s expected that we help with household expenses, which I do.

They used to have hired help for this.

Since I can remember, we’ve had the same cleaning lady come every once a month to do a deep clean of the house.

The rest of the time, we all just do surface-level cleaning, which I still participate in.

A few months ago, the cleaning lady moved to another city.

Dad made a decision.

My mom and I initially planned to look for a replacement.

But my dad refused. He said we didn’t need to hire anyone else, and that we could just do the deep cleaning ourselves.

Now, when my dad says “we,” what he actually means is “me and my mom.” Because in his mind, apparently, cleaning is done with the ovaries.

Her mom gave in.

At first, both my mom and I said no, we knew that he wouldn’t actually help.

But after some back and forth, he managed to convince my mom. She suddenly agreed that we could do the deep cleaning ourselves.

I told her I could cover 100% of the cleaning lady’s cost myself but she still said no.

So I said, “Okay, then you’re making this decision without me, which means you’ll be doing the cleaning without me. You’re retired, maybe you have the time. I don’t.”

It’s all panned out essentially how you’d expect it to.

Fast forward a few months: Dad hasn’t helped at all (shocking, I know), and I’ve stuck to my word.

I haven’t helped with the monthly deep cleaning, but I still do my regular share of the daily or weekly chores.

Now, my mom is annoyed and says it’s unfair that she has to do all the deep cleaning herself.

But I still refuse to help, because I feel like the person who should be helping her is the one who pushed for this change in the first place aka dad.

So, AITA for standing my ground and refusing to help with the deep cleaning?

Her mom learned a hard lesson. Maybe OP could remind her of her offer to pay for another cleaning lady.

Let’s see what the comments on Reddit have to say:

You’re not the only one to have this argument.

You’ve already offered a solution.

Also, a solid line here.

Sounds like it’s time to clean house.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.