Living with the work
The cleaner, the plumber and the painting
7 min read ▪ 30 August 2026
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This is the visit that happens every week, and nobody writes about it. Willem van der Krieken on the difference between a guest and somebody being paid.
What about the cleaner, the plumber and the workmen?
Mention it once when you book, in one sentence, without apologising. Somebody paid to be in your house did not choose your walls, cannot leave, and cannot say anything about them — so the part that lands badly is the surprise rather than the painting. One flat sentence at the booking stage removes the surprise and nothing else needs doing.
- It is a workplace for them, which is a different relationship from a guest.
- Taking it down every Thursday is a job you invented and it never ends.
- A study with a door, or the landing instead of the hall, solves it structurally.
The visit nobody writes about
Every article about living with this kind of work talks about dinner parties. A dinner party happens four times a year. A cleaner happens fifty times a year, and the boiler engineer, the meter reader, the delivery driver standing in the hall and the man measuring for blinds happen in between.
These are not guests, and the difference is not politeness. A guest chose to come, can look elsewhere, can make a joke, and can go home. Somebody who is being paid to be in your house has none of those. They are in the hall because that is where the stopcock is, and if there is something on the wall they would rather not be looking at, the options available to them are to say nothing and get on with it.
That asymmetry is the entire problem, and it is why the answer here is different from the answer at a dinner party.
It is the surprise, not the painting
Ask anybody who cleans houses for a living and you will get the same answer: they have seen everything, they are not shocked, and what they mind is being caught off guard in a room they are working in.
Being surprised by something is a small social event. It costs a second of not knowing where to look, and it happens in a house where you are working and cannot show it. That second is the whole of the harm here, and it is completely avoidable, because it only ever happens once per person.
Everything in this article follows from that. You are not managing an opinion. You are removing a surprise.
The sentence
At the point of booking, not at the front door. One sentence, flat, and then straight on to the practical thing.
“One thing so it is not a surprise: there is a painting of a nude in the hall. Can you do Thursday or is Friday better?”
Three things about that sentence. It is at the booking stage, so nobody is standing in front of the painting while it is said. It contains no apology and no explanation, so there is nothing to respond to. And it ends with a different question, which gives the other person somewhere to go.
What not to say is the version with a laugh in it, or the version that starts with I hope you do not mind. Both of those ask for reassurance, which puts the person you are paying in the position of having to comfort you about your own wall. The same principle runs the guest version of this, and it is the same mistake in both.
The structural answers
Better than any sentence is a house where the question does not arise, and that is mostly a decision about which wall, taken once.
| Answer | How well it works | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| A study or spare room with a door | Completely. A closed door is not hiding, it is a room | You need a room with a door |
| The landing or upstairs hall instead of the downstairs hall | Very well. Most trades never go upstairs | You see it less often too |
| One sentence at booking | Well, and permanently — it only has to be said once per person | Ten seconds of mild awkwardness |
| Nothing at all | Usually fine, honestly | You will not find out if it was not |
The second row is the underrated one. The downstairs hall is where every trade stands and it is also the boldest wall in the house — the hallway article makes the case for it. The upstairs landing has almost all of the same qualities, gets seen by everybody who lives there and by nobody who came to fix the boiler. If you are choosing between them, that is a real difference and not a compromise.
The cleaner specifically
A cleaner is a different case from a plumber, for two reasons that both point the same way.
It is recurring. A plumber is there once and the surprise is over. A cleaner is there every week for years, which means an unresolved discomfort is a weekly unresolved discomfort. That is worth ten seconds of sentence, and it is the single strongest argument for saying something.
It is a workplace. Your house is where this person works, and they are working alone in it, unsupervised, in every room. There is a version of this conversation that is respectful — naming it once, plainly, and then never mentioning it again — and a version that is not, which is expecting somebody to dust around it while pretending it is not there.
Cleaning around a painting is worth one extra line, and it is practical rather than social: ask them not to. Oil on canvas should be dusted with a dry, soft brush and nothing else — no cloth, no spray, no water. That is a genuinely useful thing to say to somebody who cleans your house, and it happens to make the painting an ordinary object with instructions rather than a subject.
What not to do
Do not take it down every Thursday morning. It sounds like the considerate option and it is the worst one available.
It is a recurring job you invented, it puts a hole and an unfaded rectangle on the wall that says exactly what was there, and it teaches you, once a week, that you own something shameful. If you have to take a painting down for a specific person, the honest conclusion is not that the painting needs moving on Thursdays — it is that it is on the wrong wall for your life, and a different room is the answer.
The same argument in its family version is in your parents are visiting: leave it up. And if you are still choosing which canvas, the works in the series vary a great deal in how direct they are — Deelee (Black Straps) at 80 × 60 cm asks less of a hallway than most, and the full collection is worth going through with that in mind.
Questions people ask
Should I tell my cleaner about a nude painting?
Yes, once, at the booking stage, in one flat sentence with no apology in it. A cleaner is in your house every week, so an unspoken discomfort becomes a weekly one. Saying it once removes the surprise permanently, and the surprise is the part that actually lands badly.
Should I take it down when workmen come?
No. It is a job you invented, and it leaves a hook and an unfaded rectangle that tell the story anyway. If a particular person genuinely requires the painting to be down, the real conclusion is that it is on the wrong wall, not that it needs moving every Thursday.
Is it unprofessional to have this on the wall when tradespeople visit?
No. It is your home, not a workplace with a dress code. What is worth being careful about is the asymmetry: they cannot leave and cannot comment, so the courtesy is to remove the surprise rather than to remove the painting.
Can a cleaner dust an oil painting?
Ask them not to clean it, and give them the reason. Oil on canvas wants a dry, soft brush and nothing else: no cloth, no spray, no water, no polish. It is a useful instruction in its own right, and it makes the painting an object with a rule rather than a subject.
