Some questions about hiring a cleaning lady/man

[anatess]

I use a maid and laundry service for anything that needs to be ironed.

This is how I see it - I have a 3,000 sq ft house (you must be Filipino if... your house is a hotel for all your relatives passing within 100 miles of you). So, I have 2 choices: Spend 8 hours every week cleaning and ironing or go to work for 8 hours every week so I can have income to pay somebody else to do it for me. I happen to love programming. Even if I wasn't paid doing it, I would still be doing it... kinda like people here and their ball pythons - even if they don't get paid taking care of snakes, they'd still do it. Anyway, I spend 8 hours programming to make money to pay for 8 hours of cleaning and laundry service because I'd rather program than clean.

Okay, that said... I used to have a professional maid service who has 2 maids come every week and spend 4 hours cleaning my house. They divided my house into 4 sections. Every week, they clean 3 sections and deep clean 1 section. I paid them $175/week. Yes, I can make that money programming for 8 hours.

Why so expensive? Because they're bonded and have been in business for over 40 years in my city. They can't just swipe my stuff and take off with it because I can sue them. They're not about to disappear by morning. This company has a key to my house!

I don't use them anymore. I actually found one local woman that does all this for $75 per week and she sometimes spends about 6 hours in my house. But usually she spends less than 4. She's very meticulous and she won't leave until she feels the house has met her standards of clean which is why I love her. She's also bonded and she had glowing references from people in my city who I called and talked to. She was recommended to me by a friend. She works solo. She is an LLC - so she's a legal business entity. But she's her only employee. She doesn't have ads though. She goes completely through word of mouth reference.

It is important that you know and trust a maid service. These guys have access to you, your children, your pets, and your stuff. You have to know that they won't disappear by morning. To me $25/hour for 1 person is super cheap. Remember, these people have to drive to you, bring their own cleaning materials, and carry insurance for anything of value that they break in your house. They have 2-3 houses to clean everyday. So, their per hour rate does not only cover the hours they are physically in your house. They also have to account for driving distance between jobs on top of their materials. And, if they only pocket $10/hour, it is so much easier to go flip burgers or ring groceries at Wal-mart for the same amount of money. Housecleaning is a specialty. Not many people can do that job well - as you know from experience.