My Kitchen Rules star Ash Pollard has revealed she was fired by her house cleaner — and it’s not for the first time.
In an extraordinary ten minute rant posted to social media on Wednesday, the 38-year-old mother raged about how she can’t find a cleaner with ‘the same standards’ as her own.
‘Is it possible to be fired by your own employee? Because I just was. My cleaner fired me as their client. Do you wanna know why? I’ll tell you,’ she began.
‘My cleaner said my expectations were too high for their service for which they had been providing for the last two years.’
The Australian radio and TV personality, who rose to prominence on the 2015 season of MKR, filmed herself pottering around her kitchen in Melbourne as she told the story.
Ash explained her house cleaner, whom she paid ‘the big bucks’ to clean her Melbourne home where she lives with her partner and two young children, had failed to clean her shower well enough to prevent mould.
‘Now, this house was brand new when we moved in. No one had lived here because we’d just finished building it.
‘They were the only cleaners that cleaned this place every fortnight and I would just do the upkeep in between.
My Kitchen Rules star Ash Pollard has revealed she was fired by her house cleaner — and not for the first time
‘Our shower started to grow mould in the grout and in the cork. They were the only ones cleaning it which means if it’s already growing mould, they’re not cleaning it properly.’
Prior to cleaning her new-build home, Ash said she’d employed the same cleaner to look after her rental.
‘I said, “Listen, this isn’t being cleaned properly.” I had to get the corker back and he re-did it so the shower’s fresh again.’
‘I said, “Listen, it’s dirty.”‘
The cleaner apologised in a text message sent to Ash and said they would take full responsibility.
Melbourne mum Ash Pollard, 38, posted her ten minute rant about her house cleaner to her 128K Instagram followers
But then decided they’d simply had enough.
‘Your standards are obviously too high for our service,’ they wrote. ‘Good luck in the future.’
‘Do you know the funny thing? This is the second time this is happened to me,’ she revealed.
The Australian TV and radio personality was enraged that her cleaner hadn’t kept mould from appearing in her shower and said it must have been their fault because ‘no one else’ had cleaned the shower since her family moved in
‘Because I just keep thinking it’s them. Maybe it’s me,’ Ash continued.
‘Nah, it’s not f**cking me. What is wrong with people these days? People have low standards or they’re not willing to put the f**cking work in.’
She added that the company she was using was ‘expensive,’ but didn’t specify what she paid for her fortnightly clean.
‘First world problems, I know,’ Ash said.
But then she continued angrily, ‘So you think they would get on their hands and knees and scrub the grout!’
‘They weren’t getting a grout scrubber. They would just lightly go over the floor and mop themselves out of the house.’
Ash pranced around her kitchen as she mocked how her cleaner mopped her floors and then demonstrated how she expected the task to be done
Dressed in black activewear with her blonde hair pulled back from her face, the self-described reality TV OG wildly thrusted an imaginary mop backwards and forwards.
Ash pranced around her kitchen as she mocked how her cleaner mopped her floors and then demonstrated how she expected the task to be done.
Dressed in black activewear with her blonde hair pulled back from her face, the self-described reality TV OG wildly thrusted an imaginary mop backwards and forwards.
‘Mopping is not like this,’ she yelled. ‘It’s like this! You need to be f**king breaking your back and sweating for that.’
Ash Pollard has also appeared on Dancing With The Stars (2015), I’m a Celebrity! Get Me Outta Here (2017), and most recently the second series of The Traitors in 2023 and previously put a call out to TV networks because she didn’t ‘want to be an influencer’
In her next video, the mother-of-two explained that she’s ‘very much into outsourcing these days’ because although she’s ‘good at cleaning [she’d] prefer not to do it.’
‘Because I’d rather do other stuff. I’d rather not waste my time.’
The Melbourne mum turned to her 126,000 Instagram followers to ask whether she was being too ‘anal’ about her expectations, as her friend told her.
‘I really respect good cleaners,’ she said. ‘I just can’t find one that has the same standard of cleanliness as me.’
In her next video, the mother-of-two explained that she’s ‘very much into outsourcing these days’ because although she’s ‘good at cleaning [she’d] prefer not to do it.’
The Melbourne mum turned to her 126,000 Instagram followers to ask whether she was being too ‘anal’ about her expectations, as her friend told her
Ash also complained her cleaner hadn’t picked up her furniture to dust underneath it, but instead vacuumed around it, and also hadn’t dusted her skirting boards.
‘I don’t want a speck of dust anywhere!’
In her next videos, Ash revealed she’d gone out and bought herself a duster to take the task on herself and was shocked to discover other parts of her home that hadn’t been cleaned properly.
That included the base of a floor lamp, in-between the tiles of her kitchen backsplash, and the tops of her liquor bottles in the back corner of her walk-in pantry.
‘Yeah, that’s f**cking right. Add that to my CV. I’m the new cleaning lady on the block,’ she huffed. ‘I’m not going to get paid for it though, am I? NOPE.’
‘What’s a girl gotta do? What have I got to do?’
The conclusion she came to was that she’d have to write out a list of everything she wanted to be done the next time that she hired a cleaner.
In a genius stroke of marketing, though, one Melbourne cleaning company actually edited together all of Ash’s videos and said they were up for the job.
Ash has two young daughters – four-year-old Clementine and three-year-old Claudette.
She has also appeared on Dancing With The Stars (2015), I’m a Celebrity! Get Me Outta Here (2017), and most recently the second series of The Traitors in 2023, although she has never won a reality TV competition.
In 2022, Ash ‘shamelessly’ made her bid to TV networks to be cast on more shows, such as The Amazing Race or Celebrity Apprentice Australia. ‘I don’t want to be an influencer,’ she said.