cleaning service?

Nichole8787

I noticed a lot of you ladies have a maid or cleaning service. I'm thinking of getting someone to come in and just do deep cleaning stuff. You know inside of the fridge, baseboards, fan blades etc. My questions: How often should I get someone to come go these things? How much does this Kind of thing cost? Should I schedule someone to come when I'm home or gone? What does your house keeper do? How often? What is a fair rate?

jnnfrrose6

First, rate is going to depend on where you live, how big your home is, how often they come, and what exactly you want them to do.  It will also some what depend on what you're comfortable with.  We live in a major city, about 2400 sq ft, and pay $120/visit.

Deep cleaning like you're describing usually takes longer and costs more than more regular "maintenance."  Most services will start with a deep cleaning that takes probably twice as long as a normal cleaning to get all of those things and then will do them periodically after that.  I have a coworker who has someone coming every other week for regular cleaning and once a month they do the fridge and stove and a few other "big" items.  My experience is baseboards and fan blade types of things get done regularly.

I prefer to be out of the house when my cleaner comes.  She comes every other week.  DH would prefer once a month, but that's not realistic for our family and totally worth the cost anyways since she charged more for once a month than every other week.  The first few weeks on maternity leave I wasn't able to be out of the house, so I just stayed in the living room until they finished upstairs, and then moved upstairs to be out of their way.  Once I was getting out of the house again, I scheduled errands for when she was coming.  It was probably good to be around the first couple of times just to answer questions (not many, but some things about how I preferred things).  Now that I'm back at work, it's wonderful to come on on the cleaner's day and see and smell a freshly cleaned home.  My priorities were cleaning the bathrooms, floors, and kitchen.  All the dusting and picking up she does is just a bonus to me.

ADC1979

I've only had them once so far, but I stayed home while they were there because we don't really trust to just leave someone alone in our home (plus there were the 2 dogs and the cat to keep out of their hair.)  It took them 3 1/2 hours to fully clean our house and it was a husband/wife team.  I paid $165 for that but I feel it was worth it based on the amount of time spent and the number of people doing it.  And the house was super clean when they were done.

I think I'll look into having it done monthly because of the price, but it sure made me feel better to have a clean house for a week.  (It's not clean anymore because of the aforementioned pets, the baby, and us adults.)

SaraRL07

We started our cleaning service when I was on maternity leave.  That way I had help when I was healing and I was also able to test her out and she was able to figure our likes/dislikes before I started back at work.

I love it...life is so hard already and I'm exhausted at the end of the day I will take all the help/assistance I can get which will allow me more time with dd.

She comes every other week and does a deep clean.  We live in the suburbs of a major city and pay $120