The outsourcing of domestic work in the UK has been steadily rising since the 1970s, but little research has considered the experiences of local White British women working as independent cleaning service-providers.Domestic work in India is increasingly researched but mostly with a regional focus. Through a nuanced cross-cultural analysis of outsourced domestic cleaning in a particular social context in the UK and India, this book provides a fresh perspective on domestic work: that outsourced domestic cleaning can be done as work (using mental and manual skills and labour) or as labour (understood as requiring mainly manual labour accompanied by ‘natural’ emotional/affective labour), depending on the work conditions. The book challenges feminist dogma and popular myths about housework.