Even if the kids are sleeping, your nanny is still working.
My employers kept a log of how many hours I worked. The hour count would end at 8pm every night, whether the parents came home at 8:00pm or 11:00pm. I could never convince them that those hours the children slept were still working hours. I could not leave the house with the children asleep, and I couldn’t have people over to visit me. Also, as everyone with small children knows, they do not sleep through the night, and wake up several times before actually going to sleep.
If your nanny or au pair works at night, pay her! She may not charge the full hourly amount because it is a little less work, but this is her time you are using. Those couple hours after the kids are asleep, your nanny is doing other work related to her job. She is cleaning up dinner, picking up toys, and even ironing their clothes. She is still working. Don’t take her for granted!
Clean Up After Yourself
If the janitor quit in your office, and no one hired a new one, would you want to work there anymore? Trash cans overflowing, toilets unwashed, floor gritty? I didn’t think so. Two months into my au pair experience, the weekly maid was fired for not doing a very good job. I soon realized that a not-very-good-job cleaning was much better than no cleaning at all because the promised replacement maid was never hired. The house became disgusting, only being cleaned every 3 weeks or so. Who did the majority of the cleaning in the kitchen, bathroom, and children’s bedrooms? Why me, of course! I became a part-time free maid. I was never compensated for my new duties.
The nanny’s office is your house. Any parent or nanny will tell you that the kitchen is the hub of childcare, especially with younger children. Your nanny expects to clean up after your children; straighten their room, pick up toys, clean up mealtime messes and dishes. She does not expect to start her day with the crumbs from your dinner on the kitchen floor, the roasting pan from last night’s chicken sitting in the sink, and this morning’s coffee cups lined up next to, but not in, the dishwasher. If you don’t plan on cleaning up those little messes, ask her if she minds and pay her accordingly. The nanny is not a slave. She is not cleaning up your mess out of the goodness of her heart, she is doing it because it is in her way. If she finds she is washing the children’s floors because they are so disgusting she can’t let them go into their own rooms, you need to do something. Compensate her for the extra work, hire a maid, or do it yourself.