Do you remember your reaction the first time you heard that someone you knew had a “cleaning lady”. I remember thinking, “I guess that is how the other half lives” (eye-roll). Well, now I am here to tell you from my experience, it is more common and attainable than I once thought… and it is so worth it and helpful for us moms!
Don’t get me wrong, I know that having a housecleaner is a bit of a luxury, an extra. You may be able to work it into your budget, or maybe you cannot. If you do find that you have some wiggle room in your budget, allow me to explain why I think this could help other mom’s to.
House Cleaning: Want vs. Need
In my opinion, having a housecleaner is a “need”, not just a “want”. This is because, as much as we try, we cannot do it all and we deserve to have clean houses.
Having a housecleaner will give you one of 2 things: hours of your life back OR the clean house you never have. For us, we reclaimed hours of our life when we hired a housecleaner. Weekend hours we could spend with our daughter, doing family things and giving her all of the time and attention that we can.
In our case, we have spent some of the best weekends during our best years cleaning our home. I talking about the dusting, washing all the floors and all other surfaces, cleaning the bathrooms, the toilets, scrubbing down the kitchen,disinfecting the microwave, etc. These are so hard to keep on top of but we tried, and mostly succeeded, however for 10 of the 13 years that my husband and I have been together, we missed a lot of beautiful weekend days that we will never get back. It was a vicious cycle, and it took us years and years to discover that we didn’t have to bicker over the house cleaning anymore. We could prioritize getting some help.
As you know, there are also no shortage of regular household duties to keep up on, and we still handle these duties everyday. We still have to keep on top of the laundry, the dishes, organizing the clutter. These are the household duties that a house cleaner generally does not touch. As it is, I struggle balancing all of these household duties while being a good (present) mom and working too.
Now I ask you, what is your weekend worth to you? Where does a clean house fall on your list of priorities? To us, we can more than justify paying our cleaning lady a small fee every couple of weeks for our sanity. The to-do list remains long, but the to-done list is longer than it was before. There are always ways we can all be more productive, fulfilled, happy, organized, involved, present… for me this is one of them.
Selecting a cleaning service
Don’t just hire any cleaning service. In my experience, bigger cleaning companies are not necessarily better. Fancy websites don’t make a better house cleaner. What you really want to find is a word of mouth referral to the lady who not only owns her own cleaning business but will be there each time cleaning your house.
When cleaning operations get too big, they lose accountability and the quality can suffer. Ideally you want a team of two or more people cleaning your house each time so that it doesn’t take all day. Two wonderful ladies clean our house and it takes them just under two hours. The cleaning business should also be insured, and check references.
How much does it cost?
The cost? Depending on the size of your home, the amount of clutter, and your market, it will probably cost you somewhere between $75 and $150 every two weeks to have your house cleaned if you pick a small operation cleaner, and only use the services that you need. (Yes you will see some cleaners who charge well over $200, unless you live in a mansion, keep looking) Don’t be afraid to negotiate a fair price with your house cleaner, but at the same time remember that it is hard physical work to be a house cleaner and their money is well earned.
Always “clean for the cleaning lady”
My friends laugh when I say that I am cleaning for the cleaning lady… but you really kind of have to. Let me explain:
- We do our own dishes and laundry, and don’t expect that of our cleaner.
- We strip the beds and leave out clean sheets (If your cleaner does the beds, not all do).
- We also pick up pretty much everything from the surfaces of our home, all of the clutter so that they can clean them.
If you don’t pick up clutter, expect that they will not be able to clean those surfaces. Either that or they may want to charge you more for the extra organizing that needs to be done. They will see how cluttered you are when they come to quote out your job initially.
As a result of this post I hope, if nothing else, you now understand my perspective and see how having a house cleaner is a means to making most moms even more productive. Who knows, maybe it would work for you too!
If you are in the Portland, Maine area and are looking for a house cleaner feel free to message me and I would be happy to refer you to our wonderful cleaning lady!
