Should I get a cleaning lady? (And how?)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Obviously, that’s not a question anybody can answer for me, but I’d like some opinions.

Right now, I can’t, because the house is that freaking gross. Not that I’d be embarrassed, but I don’t see what a cleaning lady could do for it - you can’t even get into the office, how on earth is she going to know what to do with that giant pile of crap? We need to have a giant organizing blitz, and I mean GIANT, before I think anybody could even begin to help us.

But that’s what I always do (although I’ve never had the whole house clean at once) and then it slides right back. Can you get a lady to come in, like, once a month? And de-cat-hair the place? And pick up my boyfriend’s nasty socks?

The thing is, I don’t have a lot of spare cash to be throwing at this, but it’s a huge quality of life issue, and reading the thread about “is slob reform possible”, the fact is, for me, it has not been. There is a dead cockroach on the dining room rug that I have been stepping over for days. I’ll step over it tonight, too. I mean, I can’t really do much right now, because my leg is in a cast and if I get down on the floor I won’t be able to get back up again. But it’s not like the state of the house is unusual or anything.

So, assuming I did get one, how expensive would it be? Maybe biweekly or something? The house is two bedrooms and a bath and a half, maybe 1800 square feet. What will they do? (Will they clean out the litter boxes?) I guess that depends on who? How on earth do you pick one? I know I don’t want one of those gross corporations like Merry Maids - they don’t really clean stuff, and you don’t have the same people all the time. I don’t know if I know anybody who has a cleaning lady come in - my mom used to when she kept my niece as a baby, but that was a long time ago. How do you know they won’t let your cats out and rob you? I assume they come when you’re at work?

2

Look in the classified ads of the local newspaper for independent maids. Ask them for references, and speak to the references. Yes they will come when you are not home and this is about the only way you’ll know that they won’t rob you.

Maid service, especially with someone independent, is an a la carte deal. They’ll come by and you can work out together what needs to be cleaned and how often.

You may have trouble getting someone to agree to do the job if your house is un-walkable messy. But you may find someone who is a perfect fit and will help you de-slob over time.

Knowing that someone is coming by once every other week and will see your mess might also be a good motivator for you to de-slob a bit.

Prices vary by area (and by duties) but AFAIK my brother pays $75 every two weeks for the maid to come vacuum and dust his ~1100sqft place, plus clean 2 bathrooms.

3

Do any of your neighbors have cleaning people? They would be good people to ask.

4

The quarterly or monthly advertising mags that come in the mail always seem to have ads for cleaning services.

Being in a cast is actually the perfect time to have someone come in; they’ll assume you’re “behind in your cleaning” because of the cast, and not that you’re just a slob. Perfect cover:cool:

It sounds like your house is in a state where you might actually want to be around the first couple times the person comes by. You don’t just need cleaning, but organizing/decluttering too, which would be hard for someone to do without knowing where stuff goes. I’d be upfront that you need help with that before any real cleaning can take place. You also need to assess your stuff and think about why things are the way they are. Do you need more storage, a paper shredder, a boyfriend who doesn’t leave socks around, etc. Make sure you are ready with supplies like boxes and garbage bags and stuff for when the person comes.

For cat hair, I have this great mitten thing (got at Target) that has a Velcro-like surface. Makes it easy to just wipe stuff down every couple days (Ok, maybe weekly).

5

Do any… do any… god, now I can’t see straight because of the tears streaming down my face.

The nearby ghetto-ass liquor store just left a flyer on my car advertising King Cobra two for a dollar. I don’t think most of my neighbors have servants.

Maybe people farther in - I can e-mail the head of the neighborhood association and ask for suggestions, actually, which might be a good idea. But not my neighbors.

6

OK, probably not your neighbors.

But you might be surprised at how many people have a cleaning person come every couple of weeks. It’s not just rich people who you’d expect to have servants.

7

I do see a lady getting out of her car when I’m running sometimes who must be a cleaning lady for a house a few streets in. If you don’t know the people who hire her, though, I don’t know how you know if they know if she can REALLY be trusted not to let the kitties out, you know?

8

True dat. I was surprised to learn that a friend has a cleaning lady. Friend lives in a small, immaculate house. She’s not wealthy, or disabled. She hasn’t said as much, but I suspect that she hired the lady as a favor, to help supplement her income.

My mom (also not wealthy or disabled) lived in a tiny house and had a cleaning lady. The lady would dust, vacuum, wash walls and windows, and scrub the tub and toilet. Mom was always there when the lady came, not because she didn’t trust her, but because she liked to chat with her, and also because mom liked to sit and give people orders.

Sorry, but I don’t know what these ladies cost, except that they’re most likely very affordable.

9

The most effective cleaning/decluttering I have ever seen happened with a friend of mine in high school. Her mom was a douche and would leave her to watch her 11 year old brother for weeks at a time. Once a month her mom would show up with bags of groceries and then dissapear again and that was about the only time we ever saw her mom. Because of the lack of competent adults the place would get incredibly messy. No pathways through rooms, maggots growing in stuff on the stove, mildew so thick you couldn’t see the bottom of the toilet kinds of messy. My friend was always miserable living like this but she went to school full time and worked full time and cared for her brother since her mother simply refused to do so and was, understandably, pretty damn busy most of the time.

One day she finally realized her mom wasn’t going to come home and help her with anything so she called all of her friends and asked for our help. We showed up with trash bags, bleach, rubber gloves, 409, and every other cleaning supply we could think of and just cleaned for about 2 days. Once we got the place sparkling she made a point of throwing a party every 3 months that forced her to clean since people were coming over and spending time at her place. It never took more than an hour or two to clean her house again after that. Call for help and then give yourself a reason to clean every 2 or 3 months after that and you should never have to contemplate a cleaning lady again.

10

There are people who hire out, not as cleaners, but as organizers. That might be something to consider. I knew someone who used to do that. She had a few “regulars” with quarterly appointments.

11

You’re right, you’ll want to do at least some decluttering before you bring in someone to clean, because a cleaning lady can’t really do the organizing (ours just tidies up the piles… sigh…) and she won’t be able to get to the real cleaning.

Maybe if you do hire someone, she could come in and help you with that - while you sit there and toss, she can carry stuff to the trash. Expect to pay more for such an initial session, however.

Hard to say how much it’d cost - honestly I’d think 50 dollars for every 2 weeks is probably not out of line given the small house and your locale (SC somewhere?). It’d be more here (DC metro area). We pay our cleaning lady 120 per visit, for a larger house.

Litter box? I doubt it. Well, she might, but really as that’s something you need to do daily (scooping at least), I’d personally not expect her to do it. Maybe perhaps as a favor while you’re recuperating. I’d slip her a few extra bucks for it though!

12

You need to ask them what they’ll do, and they usually gauge the rate on that. We hired a cleaning lady that came once a week while my wife was late in her pregnancy and for a few months after the delivery, and our cleaning lady cleaned the house only. She didn’t pick up clutter, she didn’t do laundry. She did the bathrooms, kitchen, floors, and dusting. She did the windows inside and out once a month.

She was usually here for about two hours, and if we wanted her to do something special (clean the oven, polish silver, etc.), she’d do it in lieu of her other duties. She had access to the house so she could enter when we weren’t there. We found her to be hard working, thorough, and trustworthy. For that, we paid her $40 per week, and a bonus around Christmas.

13

I spend $50 a week for my cleaning lady for 2 hours. It is by far the best money I spend. I am perfectly content living in a sty but it makes it difficult to have people who want to come into my house.

After I spent the first 4 months not cleaning my place I broke down and called someone out of the phone book. They did a crappy job. It was costing me $100 a week 4 hours to clean a 1600 sqft place 3 bed 3 bath and they didn’t show up reliably.

I fired them and went back to the phone book and after several attempts I found one who had their voicemail set up with their business name. I called her and it has been fantastic ever since. She brings my dog in and plays with him while she works. Over Christmas she discovered that my pipes froze while I was on vacation and she thawed out my house for me and then came back the next day to check on it for free. Basically she dusts, vacuums, scrubs the bathrooms, does the dishes and the laundry, and straightens up the house. She doesn’t wash windows unless I ask her to. It is without a doubt the best money I spend every month and I would give up eating before I gave her up.

14

That’s why I hired the first one I had. :wink:

If you’ll buy that, I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in. Lovely view of San Francisco.

(My story is actually a lot more like Oredigger77’s)

The fact that I was hiring an independent cleaning person and not someone from one of the corporate cleaning services, and the fact that I knew she could use the money, did help me get over the initial guilt and feelings of “I’m not disabled, I shouldn’t need to do this”, though.

I even got over my guilt enough after a year or so to tell my mother. Turns out she has a cleaning person come every so often, too.

15

When I finally decided it was a cleaning lady or a divorce, I asked my friends to find out who had a cleaning lady. I posted on the geographically-local email groups I belonged to. I got a couple of recommendations. It turned out only one was taking new clients, but I’ve been happy with her. The first time she came to the house for our mutual interview, I explained that the MOST IMPORTANT ASSIGNMENT was not letting the cats out. As far as I know she’s never let them out. She comes every two weeks to vacuum and clean the kitchen and bathrooms. Knowing she come every-other-Tuesday forces me to spend my every-other-Monday evenings putting things away.
Consider first what you want your cleaning lady to do. Or, to look at it another way, consider what household chores you and your boyfriend will never do. For example, I hate hate hate vacuuming. I’ll never get around to doing it, so my cleaning lady’s second most important assignment is to vacuum all the floors. When you interview, ask for what you want done, and allow for some flexibility. I don’t mind dusting, so I told my cleaning lady she didn’t have to dust, the floors were more important. If you want the laundry picked up and put in a laundry basket, ask if she’ll do that.
If you think you can’t afford it, consider how long it will take you to do what the cleaning lady does. Multiply those hours by your hourly wage. If she costs less, it’s obviously worth it. If she costs more, then consider how nice it will be to spend less time arguing with your boyfriend over socks.

16

I’m not trying to come off as holier than thou, which I absolutely don’t feel, or to be insulting in any way but I have a question, both from this thread and the other one. And I’m seriously trying to be respectful about how I ask it.

What I keep hearing is “I just can’t do it, I can’t make myself be any other way.” Yet clearly you (and others) are not happy with how you’re living. So . . . Is there a pathological component to this? I’m seriously not being judgey, but I truly, honestly don’t get it. For example, the bug in the dining room: Why wouldn’t you just go get the broom, sweep it up into the dust pan and throw it out? One minute, tops. Or else presumably not be bothered by it. But you seem to hate it but still not do anything about it.

So do you think there is a mental or emotional component that makes you look at something, know it needs to be done, know that it not being done is making you uncomfortable and sad, yet still not be able to do it? It’s not like, wow, you must be mentally ill! or anything, but there’s a disconnect between seeing it needs to be done, wanting it to be done, yet not doing it, and I guess I just don’t get that disconnect.

So there a counseling component that might be of benefit? With perhaps some practical lessons from an organizational specialist? I’m not trying to make a bigger deal out of the problem than it it, but . . . the disconnect, you know?

And I do have to tell you that for the vast majority of people I know with cleaning people or services, part of the value of it is that you, the homeowner, have to pick up the night before they come, so that they will be able to do their work (which they really can’t if stuff is strewn everywhere) and so they will not know the awful truth about the daily squalor in which the clients (including me, heck, almost all of us) live. It forces the homeowner to pick up every week, before things can get out of hand. IOW, even if you stepped over the dead bug for a week, most people would pick it up themselves the night before the cleaning lady comes, rather than let her know they’ve been stepping over it for a week. So expeciting a cleaning person to pick up the slack in the organizing /putting stuff away area may not be realistic.

17

I pay someone $120.00 every two weeks to come clean. She spends four hours and cleans the bathrooms, vacuums the carpet and rugs, cleans the floors, picks up any laundry off the floor, cleans the kitchen and the refrigerator, changes the bedsheets and towels and puts them to wash, and generally tidies up the house.

That being said, we aren’t all that messy. The cleaning lady just does the scrubbing and stuff that we don’t really have time for.

Our house is 1600 square feet.

18

Sounds like you need two things:

  1. what we call in my home town “una extremadora,” an extreme cleaner; my mother’s nickname for them is “the hurricanes,” because basically they treat anything that’s not too heavy to be moved as trash. Having an appointment with a service to come swap through the whole house gives you a deadline for your organizing.

  2. a permanent cleaning service. Look in local newspapers and in the ads board at your local supermarket. You may also be able to get references from people you know at work, church or whatever.

19

One of the big problems we had before using a cleaning service is that as soon as we got all the clutter taken care of (eating up our motivation and free time) then it was time for the deeper cleaning–floors, scrubbing appliances, etc. This way all we have to do is clear the clutter, and part 2 of the job is taken care of for us. This makes a huge difference for me because I have bad allergies to dust and mold, and a couple of hours of cleaning tends to leave me wiped out for about 2 days.

A cleaning service cleans, they don’t organize. Organizing services charge quite a bit more. Litter boxes or anything particularly nasty I would take care of myself. You will probably be pleasantly surprised about how much nicer your house is when the floors, kitchen, and bathroom don’t get nasty because they are cleaned on a regular schedule. One thing you could do is declutter all rooms but one, where you stashed some major clutter, and tell the cleaner to ignore that room. When I’m in the middle of a project I’ll do that sometimes. That way you get to the IMHO true benefits of clean kitchen, floors, and bathrooms soon, and get organized on a timetable that works for you.

20

Un-done housework can come from any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s just exhaustion/depression: you know what needs to be done, you just can’t drum up the energy to deal with it. Sometimes it’s stubbornness: that’s his/her mess and I’ll be damned before I clean up after his/her lazy ass. Sometimes it’s temporary physical incapacity like Zsofia’s leg-in-a-cast. Sometimes in your busy life the amount of clutter just creeps up on you, and you realize you mother is coming for a visit next week and every surface in the house is covered with bits of paper you need to file or books you’re going to read.