Provide for house help’s space in your home

In hundreds of households across urban homes in Uganda, there is always a female or male member of the household whose primary role is to do the house chores. Bigger households sometimes have several domestic workers handling specific parts of the household chores.
What kind of space is provided for domestic workers and specifically live-in house helps in your house?

In some homes, one is likely to find house helps barely stretching their legs in order to sleep at night. A house help is not a prisoner let out every eight hours to see some sun and then returned to the cell.
“I used to work for Auntie [title used by most domestic workers to refer to their female bosses] but I was never given my own room to always sleep, I would keep my clothes in the children’s bedroom then when it is at night after every one has slept, I put a mattress in the living room and sleep,” Nancy Kiconco, retells the living condition at her former boss’ house.

Kiconco adds that she did not have her privacy as a female mostly when she needed to wear clothes.
“Every time I wanted to change clothes, from showering, it was inconvenient for me to change because I used to use the children’s bedroom and you know children, they would just bump in when I am wearing, or sometimes they are inside using the bedroom,” shares Kiconco.

The need for a house help in some homes is what makes it necessary to include a room for them in the house plan.
Wycliffe Rwashema, an architect, says most clients that come to him for house design and planning, do not normally include the house help’s room yet they are also humans that need proper accommodation.
“I always challenge my clients whenever they ask me to design a house plan, they will tell you of the living room, bedrooms how many they want explain that they need their master bedroom, children’s room and one extra room for the visitors but nothing like a maid’s room. This always disturbs my mind and I question them how about the maid’s room, won’t you have one?”
He says the clients’ response is usually disappointing. “They normally say, for that one [house help], we shall see when we get one”, he shares.

In Uganda, section 71 of the Public Health Act stipulates that the minimum size of any habitable room in a house (a room constructed or adapted to be used as a living or sleeping room, or work room, or as a place for habitual employment for any person) has to be 7.4 square metres.

The sad reality is that in most of the houses being built currently in Uganda, house helps’ rooms fall way below this threshold.

There will be cases where the plot size means all rooms in the house have to be small. However, there are still choices you can make to create a conducive environment in which the house help will live in peace and dignity.

Quarters for the house help
In some homes, house helps live in rooms outside the house normally known as boys quarters, so anyone that wants to build a home and knows they will need a house help, needs to consider having extra rooms for their workers.

Windows
It may seem obvious but there are many windowless house helps’ rooms, which should not be the case. So, please ensure there is an adequately sized window on the house help’s room.
“Just like any human being, one needs that good air circulation, and that means the room where one is living, it is well ventilated so you can’t leave out a window even though there are vents,” advises John Matovu, an architect.

Storage
Ensure that there is provision for storage in the house help’s room. This really has to do with the size of the room. A room that can barely fit a small bed will most likely have no room to properly store items such as clothes, shoes and other personal effects.

Bathroom
Where there are several domestic employees that include gardeners, handymen, and cooks, the use of communal external bathrooms can pose a daily challenge for the majority of female house helps, who are usually in their teenage years or early 20s. A good solution, therefore, is to provide a private bathroom adjacent to the house help’s room and accessed from within.

Catherine Ankunda, who has a big family in Entebbe and a big number of workers, says she built two bathrooms - one for males and another for the females just for convenience.
“Sometimes the female workers would complain to me about using the same bathrooms as the male workers, that the men would make them dirty, and not clean up, and also did not feel comfortable sharing and being a woman, I understood their point and built an extra bathroom for them,” Ankunda shares.

Other features
Apart from the features of a house help’s room on how it should look like, there are other important factors that are key.

Privacy
Just like any other human being, domestic workers would love to have their own privacy, in their own rooms doing their things there.

Motivation
House helps, like any person, when treated well will do a good job. When a house help has their own room, they will feel loved, considered by the family and this will motivate them to work better.