One of my favorite scenes in the movie Sex and the City 2 is when Charlotte and Miranda, holed up in their posh Abu Dhabi hotel, commiserate over cocktails about the struggles of being a working mother.  Charlotte confesses the first thing she thought of when she had fears her husband Harry was cheating on her with the nanny was, “I can’t lose my nanny!”

I along with many other working moms cracked up at this because we know a great nanny is worth her weight in gold.  My girlfriends and I joke if we ever had to choose between our husbands and our nannies, we were going with the nanny no question.

A great nanny will pick up the slack when your tot needs to unexpectedly go to the pediatrician and you can’t get away from work. She will do arts and crafts galore, even if you don’t have a crafty bone in your body. She will make sure your child is clothed, fed and tucked into bed while you are making that big presentation in London.

If you have a great nanny, you know you can’t live without her.

She becomes a natural extension of your family. Actress Julie Bowen may have raised eyebrows at the Emmy Awards when she thanked the “sister wives” who cared for her child but I know exactly what she was talking about.

Nannies are the unsung sheroes of many American families.

So why are so many treated like shit?

The reality is that many women who become nannies and domestic workers come from developing countries. They often come to the US as undocumented workers looking to better their families’ lives. Go to any park mid-day in Chicago or New York and you’ll see women from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico or the Philippines watching after their young charges. Often, they are black and brown women speaking Patois, Spanish, Creole and Tagalog.

Yes, you read the rare story about the nannies who makes $150,000 a year and help parents prepare their children to get into the best prep schools and make the “right” friends, but they are exceptions.

The vast majority of nannies and other domestic workers barely make minimum wage.

These women are the most vulnerable to exploitation.

Earlier this week the National Domestic Workers Alliance released the not so shocking results of a recent study. Domestic workers they interviewed reported long hours, low pay and wage theft among a long list of grievances; demonstrating we have a long way to go in protecting the rights of women who work in our homes.

As a mom you entrust your nanny with what’s most precious in your life – your child.

So I get pissed off when I hear about  reports like this and how some families treat their nannies. D2′s nanny Eva has been with us for three years now and while we have a very close relationship, I never forget that she is my employee first and she deserves to make a good living with good working conditions.

Eva has shared with me horror stories of friends who work for families where the caregivers are expected to look after multiple children, cook, run errands, clean house and be available on call seven days a week with no vacation or breaks.

Her own former employer was a family with eight children. Since her departure, they’ve gone through nannies like dirty diapers because the workload was too heavy for a single caregiver.

As women we should stand up for the women who do the work we can’t or won’t do.

Currently, most labor laws offer domestic workers very little protection so up it’s up to you as the employer to do the right thing. I believe any family who is truly dedicated to their nanny’s well being will absolutely have the following in place to protect her and you:

• A contract that establishes her salary, hours of duty, and specific duties to be performed
• A clearly articulated policy (or established norms) around overtime requirements and pay
• Regularly scheduled breaks during the day and vacations
• Predictable pay periods with regularly filed payroll taxes

If you are confused about what’s fair to ask your nanny to do,  here is a short-list of activities I think are within boundaries:

• Watch your child during your work hours and designated non-work hours
• Pick your child up from school and transport to activities as needed
• Cook for your child
• Clean up common areas where your child plays
• Do your child’s laundry
• Arrange for play dates, do art projects and crafts
• Help with or supervise completion of homework

You should  negotiate all of your  nanny’s duties upfront and if you need to expand her responsibilities or ask her to work overtime, you should expect to pay her more.

It’s true that money is tight for many families now and the cost of childcare is insane. Truth be told, the US is woefully behind other industrialized nations when it comes to affordable childcare.

But it’s time to put mothers on blast who are taking advantage of their nannies and other care givers.

If you can’t afford to pay your nanny  a living wage and provide her with good working conditions, you can’t afford a nanny.  In 2010 New York became the first state to pass a domestic workers bill of rights which guaranteed among other benefits, overtime pay.

Unfortunately, the governor of California recently vetoed a similar bill.

Many of us have mothers and aunties who worked as domestics. Dr. D.’s late mother, one of the most honorable and amazing women I had the privilege to have in my life, worked her entire life as a domestic. My late maternal grandmother worked as a domestic for much of her young life.

I’m willing to risk sounding like a preachy sanctimommy to stand up for women like them who worked so hard to allow women like me to do what I do.

I know not just a few short decades ago, being a domestic might have been the only work available to a black girl like me. I owe them.

Your turn. What do are your thoughts about domestic workers and the possibility of taking advantage of them? Am I being too harsh? Not seeing the bigger picture? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal posted this article on clutter.  The essence is that when couples fight over clutter, it  tends to be really about power and control. The article goes on to discuss some great marriage-preserving tips.

Early in our marriage Dr. D. and I had our own fights about clutter.  Oh hell, let’s call them what they really were full-scale, out and out Game of Thrones-style battles. Curse words were flying (usually from me),  threats were leveled (usually by me) and doors were slammed (usually by me). 

I agonized over whether our relationship could survive our differences about clutter.

The issue? I’m a  stickler for a tidy house while Dr. D. not so much. I like for things to be put away in their place, while Dr. D. is a champion piler. He likes to stack up papers, books, his gym bag and the like on any available surface.  He’d hang damp towels on the back of door knobs or simply throw them on the bedroom carpet when he was done. I’d run around behind him picking things up and putting them away.

He’d pile dirty dishes on the countertop even when the dishwasher was empty.

It. Drove. Me. Insane.

I begged. I pleaded. I tried to cajole him into cleaning up. Nothing worked.

The more I nagged, the worse it seemed to get.  To make matters worse, Dr. D. hated it when I put his stuff away because he wouldn’t be able to find it.

Sample dialogue.

Him: Where is that stack  of papers I had on the kitchen counter?

Me: What papers?  *snarky tone* Oh, you mean the ones that have been sitting there for the last three weeks?

Him: *fuming* Where. Are. They?!

Me: In the organizer I bought for you TWO months ago that you NEVER use!

Needless to say, these “discussions” were rarely productive.

Flash forward and we’ve now been married nearly six years and life is much more sane. We’ve both mellowed a bit and have learned to compromise and deal with each other’s idiosyncracies.

It’s probably worth noting Dr. D. and I are both eldest children (something my mother pointed out early on would become a sticking point for us as we both like to be in charge) and used to being The Boss. Except for, we dislike being bossed by one another. Dr. hated being told what to do. And I always felt like he was tuning me out.

I had to learn to deal with my own control issues, while still getting my needs met. I wish I could tell you that it was easy, but it wasn’t. With much trial and error, here are a few things that worked for us.

Get a Housekeeper.

I know this is a hot button with many couples. They agonize: To have a housekeeper or not? Waste of money or not? In my mind this is a no brainer and a must especially for working moms. Now I’ll do light cleaning every week to keep my house neat but toilet scrubbing and mopping are not my cup of tea.

I’ve had the same housekeeper for five years. Francisca comes every other week and scrubs the house down from top to bottom. I love it. Dr. D. loves it and it allows me spend more time with D2 and doing things that I love. I’d give up eating out before I gave up my bi-weekly house cleaning service.  A housekeeper is the ultimate marriage saver.

Have a designated space that is a no-go zone for both of you.

Dr. D. and I are fortunate to each have our own home office spaces. His is downstairs in his Man Cave. Mine is up stairs. Both of our spaces are off limits to the other. No matter how many dustballs and piles of paper stack up in Dr. D.’s office, I don’t touch it. When we have company and we go downstairs to hang out, I simply close his office door.

Dr. D. knows that while he might not be a fan of the family picture wall in my office (he thinks it’s cheesy) or my oversized-desk organizer, he won’t touch it.

Understand each other’s clutter hot buttons.

One of Dr. D.’s biggest pet peeves is when I move his stuff. The culprit tends to be his mail that stacks up on the kitchen counter. I  got him an Inbox and put all of his mail and papers in that. I pull out the bills to make sure they get opened but the rest I leave for him to deal with. I don’t know how often he goes through it but every now and then I catch him doing a purge and recycling junk mail and the like. He’s happy I don’t touch his beloved papers and I’m happy to have everything contained in a nice neat box. Score.

A strong relationship is better than an immaculate home.

The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is that a little clutter is worth it if it means having a strong relationship. I’d far prefer a happy home life over a spotless house any day.

Becoming a mother has also forced me to relax my standards a little bit a lot. If  you are a parent you know that trying to keep a house super clean with kids around is nearly impossible. Any given weekend our family room looks like a toy bomb has gone off  with toys scattered everywhere. But even D2 has learned to pick up his toys at the end of the day and to put them back in his toy box.

These days Dr. D. has been really good about hanging up his towel and picking up his clothes off the floor. Does he fold them and stack them as neatly as I would? No, but I can live with it and when things get a little out of hand in our shared master closet, I simply straighten up and keep it moving.

Your turn. How do you manage clutter in your house?  How do you keep it from becoming a marriage killer?