In recent years, more and more affluent families have been hiring experienced, trained couples as an alternative to having two unrelated domestic workers in their home. There are a number of compelling reasons why good couples work better in large, upper class homes. Read on to learn more!
What is a Domestic Couple?
A domestic couple is generally defined as two people who live together in a private home. The term “domestic couple” might lead you to believe that both employees are involved in a romantic relationship. However, it’s not always the case.
Domestic couple services can be offered by family members and close friends. A domestic couple will always be familiar with each other.
Hiring a couple who are accustomed to one another has its benefits. Most domestic partnerships have a long history of working together.
Each member of the team can enhance the skill sets of the others thanks to their prior experience working together. Domestic partners are competent at a variety of tasks, which we’ll discuss below.
Standard Tasks Performed by Domestic Couples
A domestic couple can be thought of as a Swiss army knife for handling household chores. Every domestic couple ought to be able to accommodate your individual needs to some extent. It is typical for one member to focus on the upkeep of the exterior of the home while the other attends to domestic duties.
Maintenance, home improvement tasks, and gardening, are some of the responsibilities domestic couples perform when tending to external property. The primary internal household tasks involve cooking, cleaning, and looking after children and/or pets.
When required, the couple will assist one another in their tasks. Both members of a domestic couple may be primarily assigned external property work by a homeowner, or vice versa. It all depends on your needs as the employer.
Now, let’s look at some of the benefits you can get when you hire a domestic couple.
Domestic Couples Have a Wide Variety of Skills
For one thing, a well trained domestic couple often has a higher skill level than other domestics and excel in a variety of areas. For example, one member of the couple’s team may not just be a great housekeeper but a professional laundress as well as someone who is very knowledgeable about caring for fine clothes, antiques, marble, silver, and copper. The other member of the couple team, perhaps the houseman, in addition to serving formally at the table, are often skilled estate managers and trained handymen used to supervising outside work crews and gardeners to maintain the grounds and outside property. Then again, inside the home, the housekeeper frequently has experience managing the interior of the home, supervising and training other staff, dealing with both vendors and contractors, keeping the home well supplied with food and other necessities, receiving deliveries, and activating alarm systems, etc.
One Member is Usually Skilled in the Culinary Field
Another area in which a domestic couple can be a definite advantage in improving the quality of service in the home is in the culinary field. More often than not, one member of the domestic couple pair is either a very good cook capable of handling parties or a trained chef able to cook gourmet dishes for parties and special occasions. The advantages of hiring an appropriate domestic couple just go on and on as the next section will demonstrate.
They Have a Strong Professional Chemistry
Apart from the generally superior skill level of an appropriate couple over individual staff, there are several distinct advantages to employing a skilled couple over individual domestics. One involves the issue of working together. A domestic couple with many years of working together generally works more efficiently, smoothly, and harmoniously than two unrelated workers in the same home. There is also the additional advantage that, in cases where problems arise with in the couple, they are usually worked out between them amicably without involving the employer. On the other hand, with two separate workers, the employer always needs to step in and resolve the dispute, leaving one of the domestics unhappy and often angry. For a more serene environment with better working conditions, a trained, experienced couple is often a better solution.
Domestic Couples Stay in Their Position Longer
The above are far from the only reasons why hiring a couple may be a better solution for a home in which two or more unrelated people are employed. Another lies in the little talked about but relevant term, loneliness. Many housekeepers experience this when they live in a home for a long period of time without their husband and family. This feeling is eased when they have their husband or wife with them. This can work to the employer’s advantage by increasing their longevity on the job and lessening the need for replacement. Then too, a domestic couple usually occupies a smaller living space than two or three separate domestics and costs somewhat less than hiring two or three unrelated workers.
Enquire with HSI About Domestic Couples for Hire
Added to the already mentioned fact that each member of the domestic couple team is trained to do a number of tasks very well, affluent employers often find that they get far better mileage out of a domestic couple and, in turn, get a far better, more efficiently run home with a domestic couple than they ever could with several separate domestic workers.