What are the standard house rules/chores you set? We gave only one (clean up after yourself) and she couldn't even manage that
School called us and said they had a student who wasn't getting along with the host mom, so could we take her in? We did. Spoke with her, it sounded like the last host mom was treating her like a slave barking orders at her and getting mad if she didn't come over to do a chore within 10 seconds. Felt sorry for her, so I just said "I would be doing the communal chores regardless so all I ask is you clean up after yourself and leave things as you found them." Simple enough, I thought. Well apparently it doesn't matter how I ask, it doesn't get done.
"Hey, I can see you're busy. No rush, but sometime before you go to sleep can you put away ___ and clean up where you were?" She said "sure" but didn't do so.
Escalated to "hey, can you please clean up ___ in the next half hour? It's looking quite messy" no change.
Escalated to "hey, your stuff has been all through the lounge the past couple of days and is looking quite messy. It's really bothering me. Can you please tidy up as soon as you leave that part of the house? It stresses me out when it looks messy like this as we also have the airbnb and it should look tidy for that." Still no change.
Had a word with her about how I didn't study 3 university degrees to become a full time cleaner, and I would appreciate being able to relax after work as I always have, but I haven't been able to for 5 weeks because I now spend a lot of time asking her to tidy up after herself and sometimes have to clean it myself in order to use the kitchen (e.g. need to use the sink, but she leaves dirty dishes). Her response "but adults are supposed to clean up after kids. My parents always do things for me." I said,"Maybe at your house, but in this house, we all clean up after ourselves."
Spoke to the school who had a word with her. Stressed the importance of following that one rule. No change. Have now arranged for her to go elsewhere because living with her stresses me out. She was upset and said "i feel really anxious about the cleaning. I try really hard but it's all so stressful". This confused me as how is 20 minutes per day cleaning up after yourself a huge ask?
Anyway, I was catering everything to her e.g "what would you like for dinner? I could make (5 options)".
Do you think she'll get a shock when she goes to the next host family? Most people in my area expect students to help with dishes and unstacking dishwasher. Literally all we asked her was to tidy up after herself - no helping with anything we were doing before she moved in.