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Hiring a house cleaner - is it worth it?
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Anonymous
13:04 again and here's the big question I think. OP - can you afford someone to come 2-3 hours every week? Or are you talking 2-3 hours a month? If I could afford a weekly person, that would cut down on stress. |
Anonymous
| It is worth it for us. We pay $90 for someone to come every 2 weeks and do a deeper clean than we do on regular evenings. We are generally pretty clean people, but things like mopping floors and vacuuming, dusting, cleaning bathrooms, etc. just were not happening before. Now that the cleaners do those things every other week, domestic tranquility prevails. They do not do laundry or dishes (except for the odd thing left sitting around every once in a while, like a coffee cup or something from the morning), and they don't put things away, but it is nice in our house that collects dust like crazy to not have to worry about dusting and sweeping and mopping. |
Anonymous
We could afford weekly, but only if it would really help us. In fact, I'd rather someone tidy up on a fairly regular basis and do full-cleanings on a monthly basis if that makes sense. I think our biggest problem is well 1) we just moved and 2) while we both don't like the state of our house we also don't want to spend our 'extra time' putting things away every.single.evening. |
Anonymous
| We have someone every other week and it is fabulous. She cleans the bathrooms, kitchen, floors, and generally tidies up. It's well worth it and I wish we could have her come every week. |
Anonymous
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I think it is worth it. Like PP, I am a "time" person. Like another PP, I am a happier person if my home is clean and neat. We are fairly neat people, but our space is small, and we both work from home on occasion.
clutter. It motivates me to deal with our clutter the day before the cleaners comes. Plus, the only time we would be able to do this is on our lunchbreaks (when I telework) or at 11pm on a weekday night. We have demanding jobs, and my husband travels long distance to his job every week. Our priorities on the weekends are getting QT with our daughter, friends, and of course, getting errands and other chores done. I will say that a lot of the services tend to peter out after a couple of visits, so it is important to make sure that they are still doing a good job. It can be frustrating to deal with the sudden schedule changes, but coming h |
Anonymous
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13:04 again. We are also nightly pick up everrything people which helps. The way we have been able to maintain this is by reducing the junk in the house and by ensuring that everything has its place. We keep only the toys that the kids actually play with. We keep only the things that we actually use. Anything extra is donated immediately. A general house rule that if you use something you put it back in it's place is helpful too. THAT is how we've reduced stress and cut out time. It takes us all 10 minutes of family time to pick up - we do this every night before we go upstairs for teeth brushing - it's sort of part of our bedtime routine.
If you have clutter everywhere and that is what is causing you stress, then a housekeeper (who doesn't organize) isn't going to help. You might even be more stressed the night before she comes because you'll be spending time picking everything up in preparation for her arrival. Just saying - find the real source of your stress first. If, like other PPs, it's that your bathroom isn't getting cleaned, then get a housekeeper. If it's clutter, seriously cut down on the stuff in your house. If it's the nightly kitchen clean and the laundry like causes me stress, well then you're just screwed unless you have a ton of money 
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Anonymous
We basically have this, our cleaners come every week and tidy and clean. I NEVER clean or tidy before the come. I used to, before we had DS, now I don't. It may not get as much of a deep clean, but its still wonderful to come home to. |
Anonymous
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Totally worth it. We had to cut it out for budget reasons, and it will be the first "luxury" I get back after this storm passes.
I understand the not wanting to spend tons of time picking stuff up. There is this larger program (all of which may or may not work for you). The most helpful thing out of it is the idea of setting the timer for 10 or 15 minutes each day, picking up, cleaning up, etc. and then stopping when the timer goes off. The motto is you can do anything for 15 minutes. And it is amazing how much you can get done without resenting the time out of the evening. And without talking yourself out of starting because it would take too long. |
Anonymous
| I hired a cleaning service when I was single, no kids. The purpose of a cleaning service is to do actual, deep cleaning - scrubbing floors, inside the stove and microwave, etc. - and not daily tidying. |
Anonymous
It's only $100 a visit for us, 3 women, 2 hours, 2400 sq ft. Do you ever scrub your floors, versus just sweeping them? How about inside the appliances? And best of all when you have cleaners, the whole house is clean all at the same time. Then again, we're not so tight that $200 a month would be a hardship. |
Anonymous
| Someone once gave me and DH a good piece of advice: A cleaning lady is cheaper than couples therapy. We have different standards of "clean" for the bathroom and kitchen. Not too different, but enough of a difference that having someone come every two weeks helps us out significantly because we know it will get done. The hard wood floors also are washed and the carpets are vacuumed. Dusting occurs, etc. We both work FT, have one kid and another is on the way. We do daily pickups of the toys and clutter, etc., but it's great to have the scrubbing done by others. |
Anonymous
| I LOVED having cleaners BUT we actually got rid of ours when the little one became mobile since we needed to clean our floors and surfaces everyday. Pet owners. Now we get to keep the $90 biweekly fee. |
Anonymous
How many dinners out can you get for $200 a month? |
Anonymous
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It may depend on just how messy you are. We are messy. As examples, we have clean clothes piled on dressers instead of put away. We have a few boxes in our room and in our guest room that have stuff in them. Other messes too.
We have a weekly cleaner. I do pick up a little before they come on Fridays, but I often don't have a ton of time. I still think that the cleaning is a relief. It stays nice for a few days, and it stays clean (but starts to get messy) later in the week. But the great thing is that I almost never have to clean the bathroom or deep clean the kitchen. I never vaccum or mop the floor. I do have to sweep the kitchen and sometimes use the dust buster for a minute. So when I do have time to clean, I can use it to neaten up/declutter. I don't see a disgusting, stressful kitchen floor or a room that desparately needs vacuuming and that is worth it. If we did every other week there would be more cleaning tasks that we'd have to do in between. Also, when you do it yourself, you don't usually clean the whole house at once so you never have a completely clean house. We used to have cleaners who would focus a lot on straightening up. Our current ones don't but I think that they do a better job with the actual cleaning. |
Anonymous
| We have one come 1x/month now - totally worth it! Now I can just focus on keeping up with the day-to-day stuff vs. deep cleaning. And as other PPs have mentioned, it REALLY helps if you and your partner have different standards of cleanliness. |