A neighbor of mine asked me to clean her small bathroom and kitchen and vacuum the rug(upstairs and down).
She is paying me $15. Is this a fair price?
It is if you can do the cleaning in less than an hour and a half.
Sounds cheap to me…a service (or individual cleaning person) charges $20+ per hour here in Denver. I’m assuming she pays for cleaning supplies?
'round here (Colorado), the going rate is around $20 or $30 an hour. I have a pretty big house (4 bedroom, 3 bath) of which my cleaning lady cleans only one bedroom (the master) and two baths, and I pay her $55 each time she cleans. I’m not home when she shows up, but I figure it takes her between 2 and 3 hours to do it.
Where you live has a lot to do with things, though. My mother in Michigan pays her cleaning lady around $9/hour, I think. So it all depends.
Well, I have a gal do my whole place (which is not huge), and I pay her $15 an hour. She always finishes in an hour or less (I pay the full $15 regardless), so I think you’re getting a pretty sweet deal for just a bathroom, kitchen and some vacuming.
Al.
What I meant to say here is that out of the 4 bedrooms and 3 baths, she only regularly cleans the master bedroom and two of the bathrooms, in addition to the rest of the house (living room, kitchen, dining room, halls, etc.). Only after I posted did I realize it sounds as if I pay someone $55 to clean one bedroom and two bathrooms!
I think she’s getting a great deal! I used to clean houses, and it probably would have taken me about two hours to do a small kitchen, bathroom, and vacuum above and below stairs.
I don’t know how long you’re there, but as kitchens and bathrooms are usually the most difficlut rooms in a house to clean, I think you should charge her $30.
And get a snack, too! 
In my part of Michigan where the cost of living is high, we think our cleaning lady is a steal at $20 an hour.
We pay her for 2 1/2 hours of work each time. She gets most of it fairly clean most of the time. Less gets clean if it’s so messy she has to work around stuff; more gets clean if I actually picked up before her arrival. I trust her to sort of work out the time/work balance.
If you’re doing in under the table (no taxes deducted) it’s a fair price.
We found this older lady who would clean for $7 an hour. We watched her clean, she was the slowest thing since a stuck turtle. But my friend still used her to clean.
$15 depends on your experience & if you have to bring your own tools & cleaning products (those are expensive) & special clothes ( you don’t want to get bleach on your nice clothes). Seems like way too much work. She is probably some cheapo who doesn’t want to pay the going rate. The going rate includes tools & stuff, which people aren’t figuring in.
She has a small kitchen (she lives in a condo, she’s my neighbor). I would say its 4 by 4 feet.
A small bathroom.
It includes the dining room floor too.
The living room carpet, plus stairs.
It takes about and hour and a half.
She lets me use her mop and Mr. Clean.
Define “clean.” My mom (who can be difficult, bless her) was upset when her cleaning person didn’t vacuum the refrigerator coils. (It’s an old refrigerator.)
Can you ask her for a task list? If it’s just light cleaning, $15 might be enough. But if you’re expected to wash walls and ceilings, clean under the sink, scrub down all the appliances, and get the dead flies out of the light fixtures, it’s not.