When Working Moms Should Hire A Cleaning Service
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Ladies, let’s just discuss: have you hired a cleaning service or cleaning professional to help clean your home? Did you hire a cleaning service BEFORE kids, or was it only something you investigated once you became a parent? (Or, did you ramp up from, say, a quarterly cleaning to a biweekly cleaning?) When would you advise other working moms to hire a cleaning service?
On the flip side, is the cost of daycare (or nanny or other childcare) so great that you can’t get behind the idea of hiring a cleaning service — and then have you gotten into the Flylady system or some other cleaning schedule for yourself (even if it’s just a last-minute cleaning system when company’s coming)?
I still remember when I realized it was time for my family to use a cleaning service — it happened when my older son had just upgraded from the baby tub to the regular tub. For some reason, when I took my own showers I never noticed all the mold and soap scum on the tub, but sitting on the floor next to my son who was happily licking the walls and toys and drinking the dirty bathwater (WHY?), I was horrified.
Up until then, my routine for keeping a “clean house” involved 15 minutes every day when I wiped down counters, scrubbed toilets, dusted something, or organized something — but I realized that with a small, crawling, growing little man (who was licking weird stuff) that I needed to raise my game. I had no particular interest in spending more than 15 minutes a day cleaning — or even to scrub the tub on a regular basis! — so this kind of depressed me.
Around the same time, as luck would have it, we went out for a date night with another married couple, and they started talking about how AMAZING their cleaning professional was. “She’s like the housekeeper I had when I was in London,” the husband, A, gushed. The wife, my friend N, piped up: “Yes! She asked if she could organize A’s closet and then did a great job!”
Psst: some of our favorite books on cleaning:
We expressed interest, and so they asked, and soon their cleaning professional, O, was cleaning our home once every two weeks. My home quickly became WAY cleaner than with my own cleaning method — not just cleaner, but more organized. There was at least ONE DAY every two weeks where I felt a sense of peace and calm coming from a 100% clean home. There is no way I could go back to the way things were before!
Some tips from someone who’s had a cleaning professional for a while:
- Ask your friends and neighbors for recommendations. A Facebook group for your child’s school, a hyperlocal listserv, or a site like Nextdoor are great places to ask for recommendations. I’ve never worked with a cleaning service, just single-woman operations — I prefer knowing exactly who will be coming to clean my house and what the quality of work will be.
- Specify if you want particular products used. Some cleaning professionals bring everything, while others will use what you have. (O even asked us to buy about $100 in products the first time she came to clean, including a fancy mop.) If you have definite opinions about whether you want green cleaning in your home, or you prefer unscented products or things like that, it’s a good idea to be very clear with them about that preference.
- Do the pre-clean until you know them better. Some cleaning professionals will organize your stuff if you ask — but some won’t. I once hired someone who I thought could handle working “around” a few dirty dishes in the sink, but days later I found sharp knives sticking UP in the big canister we use to hold spatulas. Um, no thank you. I kind of love the pre-clean anyway, because I feel like my time is best spent organizing — almost anyone can clean the countertops, but only I can put the stuff away in the drawers underneath them. (And not to get into too much about emotional labor, but my experience 80% of the time is that my husband moves stuff from one solid surface to another in order to clear up the surface to be cleared, versus my usual attempt to actually return things to their rightful home. E.g., regular toys mixed with bath toys stay in the bathroom when he precleans the bathroom, whereas I try to put the regular toys back in the living room or wherever they belong.)
- Have your house cleaned as regularly as you can. I tend to prefer a once-every-two-weeks cleaning because we can stand the mess until then, and we don’t have to commit hours every week to doing a pre-clean. I know one stay-at-home mom of three who prefers to get a weekly housekeeper rather than hire a mother’s helper or babysitter to take some of the pressure off herself.
- Bask in the glory of your clean house. I like to host friends for dinner or schedule playdates during weeks after we’ve had our house cleaned — it feels like it gives us an “excuse” to socialize.
Readers who have already decided to hire a cleaning service, maid service, housekeeper or other cleaning professional — how did you find them? What are your best tips for other working moms who may be just starting to consider a housekeeper? What do you say to your kids about the situation?
Pictured: Shutterstock / I_B.
1. I started the service while I was on leave with my first.
2. The cost is reasonable. $125 per month for a three floor townhouse (DC area). And it is worth every penny. I would suggest finding ways to cut back on other things to find the month. It is better than paying for therapy sometimes.
I still do the 15 minutes per evening wipedown, but that is more for organization and topical clean purposes. The service gets things sparkling, which I don’t have time to do between baby and law firm job.
i’m a messy person and my husband is extremely neat but hates to clean. so we’ve long had cleaning help. after baby ramped up to three times per week. she obviously deep cleans, also does all laundry including folding and putting everythign away, and most dishes. she also unpacks when we get home from trips, takes out garbage/recycling, and other random cleanups. she also tidies and makes beds, which i personally think is a waste of money, but my husband appreciates. definitely no precleaning here.
i’m in biglaw and my husband works a lot of hours (although with more flexibility) for less than half of what i make. we both frequently work evenings after kid bedtime. we have savings etc but it’s definitely a noticeable expense, comes out to about $900/month. occasionally it grates on me that if our genders were reversed the female in his situation would do a lot more and we would save a lot of that money. but it makes our house pleasant and our relationship peaceful so it’s fine. plus we both hate doing all that stuff so we both think it’s a good use of money.
We hired an independent house-cleaner when I was pregnant with my first child. I had a long commute, a full time job, I was tired, we’d just moved out of our small apartment to a house and had yard work to do, too. She comes every other week (we ramped up to once a week for a while, but it was too stressful to tidy for her every week) I have never looked back. imho, the answer to “when should you hire a cleaning service” is “as soon as you can afford it and have things you’d rather do than clean your house.”
I actually really enjoy tidying and cleaning when 1. I’m home alone and 2. I don’t have any pressing to-dos hanging over my head. But that happens exactly never in my life right now. I “swish and swipe the bathroom, flylady-style a couple times a week, I make my bed and tackle my clutter “hot spots” daily, and we spot-vacuum/sweep regularly, and do normal post-dinner kitchen cleanup, but otherwise I don’t do maintenance cleaning. I do mountains of laundry and nit-picky stuff like washing the ceilings in the bathroom and wiping the shelves in the medicine cabinet that I notice because I see it every day, and all my own organizing, and I have time for that because I don’t mop, change sheets, scrub showers, dust, etc
We definitely try to plan our social calendar around when our house will be the cleanest. The weekend after the cleaner comes is prime time to have dinner guests!
Honestly, I would love a cleaning person but we don’t feel like we can afford one right now. (I work at a nonprofit arts organization, my husband is a public school teacher). We just kind of keep standards low. I would like our house to be cleaner, but I love my job and love doing things other than cleaning with my free time.
It’s funny, I had kind of the opposite experience as Kat – pre-baby I used to clean my shower pretty regularly and was sort of horrified at how dirty my friends with kids’ houses were. Then after I had my son I was like, why would I spend time cleaning the shower?! It’s clean BY DEFINITION – all we do is wash in it! We recently bought our own place and now that we no longer are renting a bathroom with hopelessly stained, cracking grout, I do try to clean ours more often since it rewards my effort better. But I don’t think soap scum is a health hazard by any means.
We’ve had a company do biweekly cleaning for two and a half years now. It’s something I’ve wanted for years as I despise cleaning and a lot of the arguments my husband and I had involved cleaning or the lack thereof. I actually had the corporette post about a cleaning service bookmarked for two years to motivate me to bite the bullet and set something up. Now, if something happened to make us need to cut back, the cleaner is one of the last things we’d get rid of – it’s just too convenient and saves so much stress and gives us more time with our three kids and with each other.
I found our company on Angie’s list because I didn’t know anyone local who had a cleaner who could recommend one to us. We’re relatively satisfied, but I would prefer to have one person I know and trust. We have a “regular” cleaner from the (locally owned) service, but that changes every couple of months and it seems like some of the cleaners call in/are replaced at the last minute more often than not. That being said, it hasn’t been annoying enough to start looking elsewhere – and I’m still in the position of not knowing anyone who could recommend someone better.
We’re in the Midwest and pay $125 every two weeks for 3.5 hours of cleaning. That includes four bathrooms, kitchen, floors, dusting, etc but no laundry or dishes. We declutter the night before – a task I loathe (I say facetiously there is a real market for someone to clean for the cleaning person). But if not for the cleaning schedule, the clutter would pile up beyond control – so it’s nice to have that making us do it.
I am the type of person to second guess major expenses, but the cleaning service is maybe the one thing I’ve never questioned or regretted.
Our oldest is 5, and the kids know we have a cleaner (I work from home, so they’re usually here when the cleaner comes). It hasn’t caused any weirdness or awkward questions or conversations yet – when they’ve asked about why so-and-so cleans the house, I’ve just said that I hired them to do it so I could spend more time with the kids. That answer has satisfied them so far.
We finally got a monthly cleaning service after our second baby was born and I went back to work. I really wish we’d done it sooner, but my stubborn pride totally got in the way. TODAY is our cleaning day, and I can tell you that one of the best moments of my week will be walking into a sparkling clean house and knowing that I can take it easy for a few days.
I’d add the caveat: A cleaning service only goes so far. There is still quite a bit of daily cleanup that has to happen in our house. But, it’s cut way down on the resentment I’ve felt about being the only adult who sees when the deeper cleaning needs to happen.
We got a monthly cleaning service once my husband and I moved into our house together – I was tired of spending my limited free time (BigLaw) cleaning, and as his standards are far lower, he didn’t see why I needed to spend all day on a weekend cleaning. It’s funny in that I don’t mind clutter but hate dirt – he doesn’t see dirt but clutter drives him crazy. I tried a few small (1-3 woman) services via groupon and living social until I found one at a reasonable price that I like. We’re pretty far out in the DC suburbs and pay $130 for once a month, 3 BR/2.5 baths. Our house is 4 BR, but the fourth bedroom only recently got cleaned out from being a storage room, so I was cleaning that sporadically as needed.
We’ve had our current housekeeper for 2 years now. Baby is coming in 3 weeks, and I think I might upgrade to twice a month given that she will eventually be crawling/licking/mouthing things, as well as to the 4th bedroom. If we ever get our office fully unpacked/unboxed (2 years later!!!) we will include that in the mopping and vacuuming but not the organizing because I would lose it if someone upended my very messy but organized to me desk. Housekeeper currently comes on Saturdays (I have trust issues with strangers in my home when I’m not there). Given that my husband will be staying home with the baby once I am off leave, we might also switch to weekdays which will free up weekend time for me.
I do the pre-clean in that I do the pre-clutter removal (usually a mad dash around the house for 2 hours or so Saturday morning putting stuff back where it belongs and folding all the laundry I haven’t folded in the last month). Husband does some, but he doesn’t really leave clutter everywhere (but will help me fold “joint” laundry that gets piled on the spare bed when I am too lazy to fold it before they come). We each do our own laundry and then I wash/dry the sheets and towels – folding happens sporadically, usually when the housekeeper or company is coming. Housekeeper strips and makes the beds but doesn’t do laundry.
I am debating this right now. I’ve used a service like Handy in the past but didn’t love it either in terms of result (hit or miss, one very nice woman did a nice job on everything but said she didn’t believe in vacuuming) or the uncertainty of having a different stranger come to your home. Another smaller service I used for a ‘deep clean’ was much better about both (they promise you the same person) and I’m considering calling them for a bimonthly visit. I’d love to have an individual person come directly but I’m not sure I want to deal with all the taxes, etc., or how that even works.
We built it in to the monthly expenses of having a house – we estimated it would be $150/month (it’s about $120 to come biweekly right now) and factored that in when deciding how much of a monthly house payment we could afford.
We both work full time. I am not interested in spending my weekends cleaning the toilet, and neither is my husband. This was a way to still have a clean house, but be able to enjoy our non-working time and not fight about whether the shower grout is sufficiently white.
We hired one a few months ago, when I was about 5 months pregnant with our second child. It’s a mom-owned small business; the owner has been twice and we’ve had or will have the same cleaner-employee every time. We found it through Amazon home services; I had a discount for buying one bundle of three visits, and then we booked her directly after that. She’s $150/visit for about 3500 square feet (2 floors). Because I do a pre-clean/declutter and then have a cleaner house when she’s done, I feel like I’ve kept our house cleaner since we’ve hired her. She comes monthly; I would love to have her come 2x a month, but it feels like too much of a luxury expense. To compromise, I bought a Roomba from Amazon warehouse deals for about $200 and “vacuum” upstairs three times a week. Now I’m eyeing the Braava mop for downstairs.
I will say that hiring the cleaning service has brought some more peace to my marriage (no more daily squabbling about cleaning! No resenting that I spent LO’s naptime cleaning the bathroom while DH relaxed!) and eased my working parent guilt, because I spend time with her on the weekends without thinking I should be deep cleaning. For that, it’s worth $150 a month.
I hired a cleaner when I moved in with my spouse. I figured the savings for combining households offset the increase in cost. Also eliminated the question of who was cleaning/ what standard of cleaning should prevail. At the time I had a coworker that very adamantly insisted only couples with children should hire cleaners. I think that ridiculous, but apparently not an uncommon belief.
I would like to know how find these awesome cleaners that also do your laundry/make beds/ organize closets. I love my current housekeeper, but she only cleans the house. Once the kids are older, I would like to consider a weekly cleaner that provides more services, but I am not sure how I find this service.
So I am a bit of a germaphobe (an ironic thing for me to say considering all the cat hair and dust in our house right now…), so I would worry about whether the cleaning person is doing a good enough job and, for example, NOT doing what Barbara Ehrenreich was taught to do when she worked undercover with a big house-cleaning chain in her book Nickel and Dimed, which was to keep using the same rag/sponge all around the house, including after it got dirty/germy… Gross.
Answer: always.
We pay $100 for every two weeks. Our home is 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths and about 3,000 ft. Our cleaners don’t usually do the guest room or the dining room. Two young kids (lots of food on the floor….)
DH and I spend Wednesday nights cleaning clutter (or…putting clutter in baskets). Cleaning service is 2-3 people for 1-2 hours. They vacuum, mop floors, clean bathrooms, clean kitchen. They don’t do windows or the inside of the fridge or empty dishes or do laundry.
I love it and if push came to shove and finances were an issue, I would consider the cleaning service my Christmas, birthday, and anniversary presents. I love it that much.
We are on the Cinderella plan–I am teaching my 10-year-old to clean her own room and bathroom and help with some other cleaning tasks. Right now it doesn’t save much time because she requires some supervision and assistance, but pretty soon it should.
We don’t have a cleaner yet. I just started back at work. My problem is that I don’t mind the surface wiping type cleaning but HATE organizing/picking up stuff. I wish there was someone we could hire to pick the kids toys off the floor everyday and organize them, but not dice. Once the place is tidy enough I don’t mind cleaning so much. I use lots of essential oils in my cleaners so it smells nice and relaxing. I’m also a stickler for cleaning things properly, not just making things look clean.
My other fear is that I’ve lived with people who didn’t have to clean anything growing up and I ended up having to do it all because they didn’t even know how to scrub a bathtub for example. I don’t want my kids growing up like that.