Housekeepers

What a housekeeper does

The housekeeper is responsible for the condition of the house and everything in it that can be cleaned, pressed, mended, folded or put away. In a small household that is one person doing all of it. In a large one it is an executive housekeeper with a team of two or three, a laundress and a schedule that runs to several pages.

• The daily, weekly and seasonal care of every room, to a written standard agreed with the family.
• Laundry and pressing, the care of fine linen and of the family’s wardrobes, including the delicate and the expensive.
• The care of furniture, floors, fabrics, books and works of art, in consultation with the household’s conservators where there are any.
• Preparing rooms for guests and for the family’s return from travel.
• Supplies, the linen inventory and the household’s cleaning contractors.

A written standard

We ask every household that engages a housekeeper through us to agree a written standard with her in her first month: which rooms, how often, which products may and may not be used on which surfaces, which wardrobes she may open and which she may not. It protects the house, and it protects the housekeeper from the most common complaint we hear, which is that something was done that nobody had said should not be.

Who we look for

Three years in a private household or in the housekeeping department of a fine hotel, references we can speak to, and a knowledge of fabrics and finishes that we test at interview with a basket of things that must not go in the washing machine. We look for energy, an eye for the thing that is out of place, and the discretion to keep what is seen in a bedroom in the bedroom.

Housemen and housekeeping couples

We also place housemen, who do the heavier work of a large house and often its driving, and couples who keep a house between them, usually a housekeeper and a houseman or a cook. Couples are much sought after for island houses and for second homes that stand empty for part of the year.