I was raised in the well-known small town, Carmel California. Carmel is a beautiful area and a favored spot for tourists, but it is a very expensive place to live. Houses are well beyond an affordable range and many people who can afford them don’t even stay the whole year because Carmel is merely their “vacation home” destination. While there are average and less costly places to live in Carmel, fewer people have been able to live there over the past couple of years. Since Carmel is such a wealthy area, there is a great divide between those who have high quality jobs and those who don’t. In other words, there is a clear distinction between people who have to work low-wage jobs and people who are financially well off. Often times, it is easy to distinguish the two since Carmel is a prominently white community and those working low-wage jobs tend to be of different ethnicities, primarily Hispanic.
While I can’t say that I’m not connected to the successful, white community of Carmel I have many connections to low-wage workers. My family has been employing housekeepers for about eight years. These women, who have almost always been Hispanic, come into our home once a week and do the laundry, change the sheets, vacuum and mop the floors and basically get the house into clean and pristine shape. My family has employed a family of sisters for many years now. Since they know our house and what to do with it, I hardly notice when they are there. My mom usually does all the talking (even though I sometimes regret not speaking to them in Spanish since I do know the basics), and I basically just say thank you whenever they leave. Often times I feel like a spoiled brat who is having women with much more life experience clean her room. Other times, I must admit, I don’t think about it because I have become used to their service.
I have noticed some general ideas about the jobs of housekeepers after having them work for our family over the years. First of all, their work is primarily “grunt work.” I feel like housekeepers are stuck doing the work that no one else wants to do. This work can take a long time and can be very tiring. Also, it seems that housekeepers don’t always make enough money to fully support themselves and their families. There have been many occasions where my mom has given our housekeepers food, materials, and even old televisions and toys to give to their kids. Continuing on, housekeepers seem to generally be women of Hispanic heritage and many of them work in groups. The housekeepers who come to my house are actually all related to each other and will often times bring their mother or sister along to help speed up the process. My family has a decent relationship with these women but often times, problems can arise between the owners and the workers. A common problem for housekeepers is establishing trust with their employers that they won’t steal anything from the house while the owner is gone and will always report on any lost or damaged items.
I am very interested on the occupation of housekeepers and how they both suffer and survive. I would like to focus primarily on what a housekeeper has to go through on a daily basis, how he or she gets by with the little money that is earned, and how common racial and economical stereotypes affect how a housekeeper is treated. House keeping is incredibly common in today’s world and the difficulty of the occupation can easily be overlooked. I would like very much to delve into the lives of housekeepers of today’s society and to learn just how strongly their lives are impacted by their low-wage jobs.
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