Live-in Workers?

In richer families, like my actress save, when she moved up to the heights and had an illegitimate child with Thorne Bailey, she hired an au pair, a live in maid, and Bob Pancakes moved in as a chef, the live in butler literally just answered the door and tended plants in her conservatory. The live in maid has the neat trait, the au pair has the family oriented, bookworm, and neat trait, and we all know Bob Pancakes.

"Simmerville;d-967300" wrote:
So, I've recently started to add live-in servants and other workers to some of my richer households. I find this is a cool way to avoid single sim households, but I will also allow teens with just 2-3 years left of teenhood, to get a live-in job, in order to get away, or to build related skills. These houses don't always pay very well, but they offer a small apartment (sometimes to be shared) and the employed sim won't need to worry about everyday costs like bills and food.

This far I have a few Butlers, a Cook at the castle, Farm workers, Retirement home manager, and a few more. Each do of course require certain skills, but I don't request a set skill level, just that the applying sim has started the skill. Then if several candidates, the employer might compare skills, or they might agree that the employee will build so and so many skills while working.

Mayor restriction is that the employee can not build his/her own family while having this job, but hm... that's a nice challenge, and weird solutions may be found...

So - I wonder if others do this?

I have done it in the past Sims games - but not much in the Sims 4. I had one Butler for one of my rich Sims I played quite a long time - but that was it. In past Sims games I generally hired or built robots and had Bonehilda as a live in maid. I sometimes had a Nanny in Sims 2 until I built a robot or servo for helping with the kids.

This is how I play my androids in my rotational save. Sims buy them and the androids can buy themselves free later (for double the cost even from unwilling owners).

I do this in part for interesting stories, but even moreso because I do not trust uncontrolled sims on my premises. Using my own sims as service sims is more efficient and unlike irl in the game I do not mind doing household chores.

I had a household with twins who were still child aged and the parents were dying. I didn't want to lose the children to "the system" so I moved them in with the Pancakes as 'groundskeepers' then realized children can't garden (Eliza in that save had extensive gardens) so they stayed in school til they were old enough and ran the household as teens and young adults. I didn't let either one drop out of school to do their duties, but it kept them in my game rather than shipping them off to the limbo the game puts them in when they go into protective custody.

Oh yes, I totally do this! Since I've been playing my 1800s style save, live-in servants and governesses are essential for the upper class and upper-middle class. Sims are socially judged by how many servants they have.

I use door locks to keep my family out of the kitchen or other areas reserved for the servants. For bigger houses, I have the entire basement dedicated to the servants (bedrooms, kitchen, maybe an office for the butler). I also lock the servants out of the family dining room (so they don't sit down and eat with the family) and the parlors.

I manually move the meals made by the servants into the dining room. I usually have a side table in the hall outside of the dining room that I manually move used plates to so the servants can come by and pick them up to wash them. I put a fridge that looks like a cabinet in the dining room so my family does not go hungry if I'm not looking after them at the moment.

I give the governess the "adopt as care dependent" for the kids I want them to look after. Some are more attentive caretakers than others.

I give all of my lots with servants the "filthy" trait so that they have more stuff to do.

My previous post was getting too long, so I wanted to post this separately to talk about some things I'm setting up to use in the future but haven't tested out yet.

I want my palace to have a lot of servants, so I made 1 live-in servant that is a permanent part of the residence, and I'm going to make a bunch of maids who live on a nearby lot. I'll have the live-in create a club and add all the other servants, and I'll give them club activities like cooking and cleaning.

I was thinking about having a Chamberlain in my palace who will eventually have a family of his own. I was considering moving him back and forth between households. His job is really important, so he has to live at the palace sometimes, but then he gets breaks where he can go home and live with his family.

I want my royals to have a bunch of dogs, but there's no space, so I created a kennel master who will live on a separate lot with the dogs. Then I'll have the royal family befriend the dogs and just invite them over all the time. I'm not sure how well that will work, but I'm going to try it.

In my world, you're basically considered an adult when you age up to teen, so I'm making a residential lot that's a university for my upper class and upper-middle class teen males to attend. (It's a sexist society.) The university will have 1 professor, 1 cook/janitor, and room for up to 6 students. I'm also making a boarding school for boys from the same classes with the same basic set-up. This will free up space in the house, although I'm not exactly sure how I'll use this as I still want the boys to come home for breaks and holidays. I might put them in a family club and use a days-long club meeting to bring them into the house, or I might temporarily move some servants out while I have the boys at home if I need the space.

My current save is all about occult familyplay. Have been playing it since sometimes this summer.

My founder had 4 kids, the oldest son has a family of his own that is my main family. The second son also have a family.

My main family does not have servants but all sims in the extended family gets to come over and visit for 2 or so days. While there they are one of the main family, help out but have fun too. That way the extended family gets to have friends and clubs and my main family get to know everyone.

I never seem to have families rich enough for servants, but I did play a game as a live-in nanny once.

My sim was the nanny sim and i moved her into a house that had twin babies and couldn't cope, so her job was to look after them and do some cooking and cleaning.

When they grew old enough, I'd move her into another household with little ones.

Once, she lived with a vampire family and didnt know what they were until daddy vampire asked to bite her. She fell in love with him and had to move away before risking splitting the family up. I really enjoyed that sim, lots of cool story lines came out of it.

Is there a way you have of making them do their assigned 'chores' about the house? I created a Sim to be the Cook and she hardly ever lifts her finger … May just have to remove her to make more room in the family. :open_mouth: This was a failed experiment. LOL

So many great ideas, thanks!

@QueenofMyshuno I never thought of using clubs! One major problem is that household gets too full, but calling additional maids sounds so cool! Let's know if it works as intended.

I want my Duke & Dutchess to have a dog. Although keeping dogs on a different lot could be a possibility, I avoided pets this far as I play free will and imagine so many of the household members would get interrupted when dog asks for attention. Might get a small dog, but must remember to give it independent and lazy traits :)

My Duke fam has only 2 servants, a Butler and a Cook. They will have a governante too next time there are births at the castle. I love arranging the rooms by locking doors, and at the castle this is the Butlers chore. It was a headache when hiring the butler service, when butlers switched the locked doors seemed to need adjustments. It works much better with live-in butler. I let the butler do cleaning, because otherwise there is not really much for him to do beside repairing stuff. I have a challenge with the bedroom baths, though, because with access to the bedrooms he will also use the teens' computers etc. I might need to arrange access to the bathrooms directly from the corridor, and keep the butler out of the bedrooms. Or just lock it all off and teleport him when there is chores in those bathrooms...