a man needs a maid: the thread where you go all bourgie and hire a house cleaner

once i get some debts sorted out, i'd like to do this. $60/month for help with heavy cleaning is worth it to me.

okay, so, my two friends from california have insisted to me that, in california, having a maid "isn't that expensive" and "everyone does it." Is this true, or are my friends just trying to hide the fact that their families are wealthy?

i am HUGE on cleaning services. i can think of very little things in the world that bother me as much as cleaning. when i'm done with work, i need to focus on my hobbies, not on the bathtub. it's esp. easy if u live with someone - splitting the 60 bucks a month/twice a month, whatever, is not that bad.

honestly, for ppl with a busy work life and things to do on the side, i think this is perfectly OK and fantastic at that.

I'm pretty sure this has been mentioned before. Someone started a thread about it or mentioned it on another thread. He realized that they (married couple) hadn't cleaned the kitchen for a long time and were pondering the idea of getting a cleaner. I remember because I - or rather my parents - *confessed* to having a cleaner. My mum hired one about, hmm, about 15 or 16 years ago and we - or rather I - never looked back. Does cleaning build character? I'm sure it does, but so does working seven days a week, which I do. (Of course it's debatable whether running a shop like I do is considered work, but you catch my drift.) I have professed that even if I would earn less, I would still like a cleaner. Why? *shrug* You might say it's laziness or, like I do, that I have made a choice. I love doing other things (like running a shop) more than cleaning. I prefer to work in the shop to afford the cleaner.

That said, you have a tiny appartment, so maybe if I had a small living space I'd clean it as well... But I doubt it. I realize it's a luxury. Maybe if I was in a different financial situation, I'd clean our house. But I'd have to be really poor to give it up. I once read an interview with an actress who said that even when she was on the dole, she had a cleaner.

I sort of resent that i'm defending myself because you say cleaning builds character which would imply that I lack it due to my inability/unwillingness to sit on my knees and clean.

Jessie, I'm not sure about the sit in California, but it isn't that costly here. About 7 to 8 euros per hour. With the exchange rate that could be considered a hellofalot but if you just think in dollars more or less (say 9-ish) then... does that seem expensive to you?

xp or what Surmounter said, really.

people i know pay around $30 an hour so two one hour sessions per month isn't that much, especially if you're splitting the cost. this isn't through an agency, though, which i assume might be more expensive.

A lifetime of disgusted mother groaning about cleaning up my stuff has given me a lifelong fear of allowing other people to clean up after me. This mixed with a rather strong aversion to expending effort on things I'm not being paid to do means that I kind of live in a sty.

yea agencies are more expensive.

I have my personal stuff in my apartment and this thing called "shame"

TS: living in a sty with shame vs a *stranger* cleaning up your *shit*

Funnily enough if I would go through an agency, it'd be less expensive (albeit a few *bob*). Why don't I? I love our cleaning lady. In fact my parents knew her WAY back when I was about 3 yrs old and she worked across the shop from us. This town is small, oh yes it is.

i really enjoy cleaning things and household chores, for some reason. just not doing them for other people.

i spent all weekend painting my apartment and re-doing the grout in my bathroom and it was really satisfying. i have no life, though.

I should clarify--these are maids who are at the house on a daily basis and live there on weekdays.

$60/month for cleaning seems definitely worth it, especially if you are very busy person. I could probably use one, if only to throw things out that I am too much of a packrat to get rid of myself.

oh geez, that kind of maid is very foreign to me.

People get over this useless thing called shame. They don't really care. (I'm not saying you have to poop in the corner for them to clean it up of course.) They clean for a living, not there to judge your cleanliness.

Live-in maid? Fuck that. Ours comes in 3 to 4 days a week. (She cleans our house and also the shop.)

I had a woman come clean once a week when my kids were little and I was working full time, which should have been a wonderful thing except I made myself crazy with "picking up" on the nights before she would come over. I'm possibly more relaxed about it now and would like someone to come clean up the bathrooms. I'd rather clean the kitchen myself though.

I have my personal stuff in my apartment and this thing called "shame"

haha there's that too

nah, i prefer do it myself. it's really not as a big deal by the time i get done, i usually say "that wasn't so bad".

I had friends w/ live-in maids (not exactly wealthy, but working parents all around in long-hour jobs). They really hated it - teenage boys do not appreciate having anyone clean their bedroom on a regular basis.

$70, once a month, and mainly to do things my housemate and I would probably just put off forever. Used to be twice a month, but as long as we're mostly clean ourselves, it's not really necessary.

oh god! my cleaning lady TOTALLY discovered a porn mag and a pipe all on one visit.

and u know it wasn't a straight rag either so the whole experience was definitely laden with shame.

Cleaning se4rvice is BRILL insofar as it's better than spending an equivalent amount of money on speed (to get the 'energy' to do it) or a prostitute (bcz no sexing is happening over arguing about chores or chores not getting done and the consequent depression).

It is definitely my bourgie dream to someday hire a maid and fall in love with an actress because she was playing a part that I could understand (one of my fave songs BTW).

i attribute my ability to clean my house to mild OCD. i don't go in for the foot toilet flushing though which makes me think i can't be TOO bad.

Hello, that is a new measure of sanity for me.

I know a bunch of people who do have cleaning people in LA. My wife and I will get the occasional visit from an agency crew whenever we're having house guests, unless we have the time to clean the house ourselves.

And x-post to the pre-clean clean stress. Its why my mom stopped having our ladies come over when I was younger - she hated having to do a frantic pick up just to have them come and pick up.

the section about working for a maid service in nickel and dimed put me off the corporate cleaning crews. a.) they apparently treat the workers like shit, and b.) they're apparently trained in how to make it look like they cleaned stuff that they didn't really clean. for a few years my wife and i paid someone to come every 2 weeks (a nice polish lady recommended by a neighbor), to do a 4-hour cleaning for $80. now that we have an almost-full-time nanny, we just pay her extra every two weeks to do the same thing. it mostly makes a difference in things like dusting and vacuuming behind the couch and mopping that we would never get around to ourselves.

(I'm not saying you have to poop in the corner for them to clean it up of course.)

I found a dead bird behind the wall corner of my bed. I have no idea how the fuck that happened. My house is also infested with baby geckos, which of course I do not mind.

they're apparently trained in how to make it look like they cleaned stuff that they didn't really clean.

explain. (i knew i should have read that book.)

this is one of those things i could never do. i mean, i'm not saying i'm not a typical middle-class wank; no matter how much i might protest, i am. and as other threads will attest, i'm so fucking hapless around the house that i have -- just the once, mind -- paid someone to come and assemble IKEA furniture for me.

but there's something about paying someone to clean up my stuff that crosses a small, almost imperceptible, but very important line in my mind. i can't explain it; it's a knee-jerk thing.

i'm pretty ambivalent about cleaning, and i'll admit that mrs fiendish does the majority of it in our gaff (simply because i genuinely don't see the "mess" or "dirt" she sees). but even when i was single and living in the slimiest hovel in glasgow, there's no fuckin' way i'd have considered this.

irrational? yes. cutting off my nose to spite my face? probably.

setting myself up for future shame when, 10 years and a plethora of cleaners later, this thread is resurrected (on futuristic hover-style 3D holographic ILX 9000?) almost certainly.

Oh like not being allowed to use more than a few inches of lukewarm water on the floor, JB, and not allowed to throw it out when it got dirty, so they'd just be swilling cold dirty water over the tiles. In fact I think she said they seemed downright PHOBIC about buckets of hot soapy water, which is all most things NEED to be cleaned with, instead of a hundred non-recycleable spray cans of toxic chemicals (YES SCRUBBING BUBBLES THAT MEANS YOU). Sorry, are my identity purchasing decisions showing?

spencer, who do you use? e-mail me offboard if you don't want to post the info here.

I may have said this on the other "hiring cleaners" thread I think I recall existing, but I'd like to hire not a maid, but one or two professional CLEANERS, for an extreme one-off job. The kind that I think is advertised as "bond recovery" or "moving house" cleans. I want people to come in for a whole day and do the stuff I have put off for way too long: srub down all the walls in the living room and kitchen (being a smoker makes a mess), clean up the baththroom and kitchen completely, toss out a TON of rubbish, clean blinds, whatever they decide is needed.

Thing Ive wondered: are there any cleaners out there who will take rubbish with them? Thats my big issue. Boxes and recycling and hard rubbish and I have no car and no easy way to turf it all (cant just chuck in street). Tired of being such a pack rat :( Maybe I should hire a skip and just throw out half the contents of my flat and set fire to it.

Good way to get yr security deposit back, I hear.

True, though in my case I am very sure I never will, my cat has destroyed the carpet and blinds :(

i just hired this agency. they're apparently one of citysearch's "best of" for the city and they use environmentally friendly supplies.

a brazilian woman named vera comes to our place every other week, though once a month would probably be fine. it's a little weird, but it's pretty good money for her and we are orders of magnitude neater and cleaner than the friends who recommended her (who have a two-year-old).

it's interesting how she rearranges my shit.

tipsy mothra OTM, after reading that book I could not in good conscience ever hire Merry Maids or any such equivalent again. (We used them for a while when we lived in Virginia, they came in once a week.)

Now that I own a house I kind of like cleaning it anyway.

I would love to do this every other week or once a month. Perhaps in the next year I'll find the money to do so. I see nothing wrong with it. I'm horrible at cleaning and paying someone to do things that are torture for me (bathroom cleaning, mopping) sounds awesome.

Thing I've wondered: are there any cleaners out there who will take rubbish with them?

I know there are here in the U.S., only bcz my psychotic hoarder ex-coworker told me about him having to do that. When he was moving to a different state, he got tired of going through all his shit & packing it, didn't even know what was what, so he called a service. He told them just to throw away everything left in the building; he didn't even want to look through it.

When they were done, they'd carried away over six tons of stuff!

I'm sure you can get this service on a much, much, much, much smaller scale (I'm assuming a renter/self-respecting person could not accumulate multiple tons of objects).

My friend was so insanely proud of his cleaning hardcoreness when he was a Merry Maid. It was all he talked about. I was glad when he started working at a diner.

hoo-rah

I wouldn't have a cleaner.

But I know some people who do. Not all of them are horrible.

But here is a good rule: you have to pay your cleaner at least as much as your own hourly rate in whatever it is that you do. Anything less and you're just... scum.

haha done and done

best name i've ever heard for a cleaning agency: "merry pop-ins"

your own hourly rate in whatever it is that you do. Anything less and you're just... scum.

Sorry, I'm not paying a web developer to clean my house. And if a professional house cleaner has the skills to do my job and earn my pay then they can give their resume instead of cleaning the house.

Do you pay short order cooks and waitresses the same hourly rate as you make? Get off it.

OKAY, AS THE ONLY PERSON ON THIS THREAD WHO HAS ACTUALLY WORKED AS A HOUSECLEANER, I HAVE ONE REQUEST. STOP, RIGHT FUCKING NOW, USING THE WORD "MAID." GOT IT? OKAY.

Neil Young started it.

Lots of women here work as housecleaners,esp. when they have kids. Flexibility, good hourly wage. Ultimately a demoralizing have-not job that you have to get away from.

If your cleaning needs can be taken care of in two one-hour sessions a month, you don't have a dirty home. You can clean it yourself.

One friend of mine quit a job when she overheard the homeowner refer to her as "the maid." Just sayin'.

haha. . .G.'s mother needs a bit of this. His 23-yr-old sister still lives at home and mom bitches about having to wash puke-filled bedsheets. Me: "If she comes home drunk enough to puke in her own bed, let her lie in it." Grr. . .that situation really ticks me off.

xp I do have a loose policy of not buying things I could make and/or sew, reasonably speaking. Esp if such things are made with two side seams and POSSIBLY a hem and priced anywhere over $50.

Ha! I will usually try to find things on a menu that I can't or won't cook at home

i went through a phase of doing this, but stopped when i'd find myself eating pigeon when what i really fancied was a massive bloody steak.

and i maintain that one of the single greatest things i've ever tasted was a small bowl of pasta with cherry tomatoes in venice.

Probably seen elsewhere, but whatevs: http://www.extremeironing.com/

small bowl of pasta with cherry tomatoes in venice.

Is that like bolognese?

You see, I deliberately misinterpreted Venice for humorous effect. I pretended to think it was the name of a sauce.

that's pasta joke.

i have a friend -- who has a cleaner, incidentally -- who only goes to restaurants that do food he can't cook at home. i think he's crazy.)

My parents eat at all the shitty chain restaurants they can find - Chili's, Friday's, El Chico - and I don't get it. I can heat up frozen ingredients, without dealing with a crowd or tipping a server.

Eating out is about more than just eating food.

Yeah, but only if it's an experience. Going someplace with mediocre-to-bad food and service and atmosphere (ie 95% of restaurants) is just a waste of time and money.

Chili's has good fries. Good for work lunches.

Eating out is about more than just eating food.

I dunno. I don't find the furniture all that appetizing, but the staff are often snackable.

1. I will never choose pasta with tomoto sauce from a menue
2. Grimly, I was hoping you might employ me next time you have some flatpack furniture that needs building
3. I hate being 7 hours ahead of the UK and 12 hours ahead of the UK because the fightin is done by the time I wake up :(

Eh? Why aren't you in Scotchland?

OH GAWD the Kate Pot Kettle cliché. I wished I had all day to sit on the internets, stalking everyone else for hypocrisy.

Madchen is working away somewhere glam (Singapore this week, I think) just now.

Oooh very glam. And very clean, apparently.

No, Suzy, you only come here to stalk your ex boyfriends, so clearly you're higher and mightier than I.

Kate, for someone who's supposed to be so concerned with the sanctity of friendship, that was a really bitchy thing to say.

Anna, as someone who taught me *exactly* how "sacred" friendship really is, I don't think you have a leg to stand on.

Oh come on, girls!Don't let me slap you with my broom! Err, I can't, cause I don't know where it is. Hey MAID where the fuck's the broom? (kidding!)

"Eating out is about more than just eating food."

*perv mode on* Of course it's more than just easting food.

Actually, Madchen, you're just in time.

Aside from fact that I can't afford a cleaner on my measly civil service wages, i actually rather enjoy cleaning once i get started.

I've also discovered I'm not the only person on this thread to have worked in the ambient foods section at the Princes St M&S.

I am totally Grimly - I 'don't see' dirt - and even when I do in eg the bathroom surfaces I am not THAT bothered about it! General tidiness is my issue rather than cleanliness but I don't want to pay someone to tidy up around me - tidiness directly impacts on mental state and you know - you gotta take care of your mental state yourself to take care of your tidiness yourself - might not work for everyone but keeping myself in a state I am happy existing in is preferable to feeling worried about someone else IN MY HOUSE.

How dirty do houses REALLY get anyway?

(says the single person who rents and her flatmate probably cleans a fair bit that I am just unaware of - actually not so much cleaning but more putting stuff away after washing up - I am very bad and NEVER do this... well after I have washed up things have to DRY and she always seems to be the first person to need to wash things up again... then again I am also the type of person who will see obstacles in her way of cooking and open a tin of beans and eat STRAIGHT FROM THE TIN w sossidge as spoon aka Alan Partridge wot of it).

(I am fairly terrible about keeping tidy by the way. I think the fact that I do explicity link together living conditions/general mental wellbeing is big reason why I don't want anyone SEEING!)

I've also discovered I'm not the only person on this thread to have worked in the ambient foods section at the Princes St M&S

absolutely shite, wasn't it?

(at least, it was in 1994. i'm guessing nothing changed.)

out of interest ...

anyone else ever used that mould spray stuff to get rid of unsightly black spots on a bathroom ceiling?

anyone ever misjudged the angle a bit on the first spray and, say, showered themselves in a small mist of it?

know if it has a long-term bleaching effect on hair?

fuck-a-doodle. this is why i should never clean. anything.

Yes, i worked there at the arse end of 1992 and had the dubious pleasure of stacking the bread shelf at 7am every monday morning.

x-post

This thread - so many cleaning styles. My 1st husband would only clean things if it would be a complete surprise to the person who would most value the cleaned bits. So he would only clean stuff if no one was home and then do things like polish all the copper bottoms of the pans. None of that day to day pick up after yourself business for him.

When I lived alone, I got very regimented about cleaning stuff. Unhealthily regimented. It took a few years of living with other people (namely Mr. Jaq and 2 of our respective teenagers) for me to give that up. Now, I have to gear up for cleaning, especially bathrooms. It's like my disgust threshold has been detuned several notches. Mr. Jaq is the champion of laundry, especially since he mastered the j-fold. Except for bathroom towels and rugs and kitchen towels and napkins. I wonder why but don't ask; I do those. He wants appreciative acknowledgment of his cleaning efforts, applause or a medal. I think I do too.

The bleached bits will eventually grow out GF, haven't you read all those hair color threads?

you could colour it back in with permanent marker, I hear that's quite good ;-)

hoo hoo hoo etc.

i think it's okay. i spent a while faffing about with two mirrors and all i can see is that worrying thin spot which i'm convinced is going to become a bald spot very soon. maybe it wasn't bleach spray i felt; maybe it was just the chill wind of old age whistling around my bonce.

From now on, whenever anyone addresses grimly fiendish as GF, I am going to pretend they are calling him "girlfriend."

damn!

-----------right of reply-----------

No, Suzy, you only come here to stalk your ex boyfriends, so clearly you're higher and mightier than I.

Kate, you are a bully. You just pretend to be victimized ALL THE TIME and attack people with absurdity and nonsense and petulance and violence knowing that for whatever reason - mostly because they're decent, rational people - they will not fight back.

Thanks for defending me in my absence from the kind of thing Kate would never dare say to my face, Anna - especially because you didn't need the jealous abuse either. If this is the kind of utter bullshit she has only now just managed to say on the board, I am given to wonder just exactly how much poison she is capable of spewing out on this matter privately, to people I genuinely care about, purely to advance herself. Because her behaviour isn't doing anyone else any good AT ALL.

----------resume normal thread, sorry-----------------

Mould spray on its own wouldn't bleach your hair, worry not.

No, certainly not! BLEACH per se does not even do this, all it does is burn the skin.

it can also erase memories from yr eyeballs, if poured in

I thought I'd missed it! I have been out on the gin and I saw some Koi and they nibbled my knuckles. And I saw *three* bits of chewing gum trodden into the pavement. And a bus with the Everton team advertising beer on the side. Singapore is very clean indeed. I am greasy in this Asian atmosphere. And I've been on the gin.

Grimly, don't spend money on the spray - a dab of bleach or diluted bleach on the sponge does just as well. (It works on the orange stuff in a bathroom too.)

Ewww, the orange stuff....

xpost Ah. Have you not heard of that wonderful product, Brain Brillo? I use that a LOT at the moment.

anyone ever misjudged the angle a bit on the first spray and, say, showered themselves in a small mist of it?
Dear god man, how do you manage to write without stabbing yourself in the eye with the pencil?

wow, this thread heated up pretty quickly! i must say, my own issues re hiring a cleaner isn't so much about labor/class (i have tons of empathy for service-industry people, but to me just about any job short of running a child prostitution ring or being michael vick is perfectly respectable). my issues are more tied in with my own philosophies about one's "messes" being something another person should clean up, no matter how well they're being paid. you can also apply that to things like oil spills, emissions, stormwater runoff, even just random litterers and people who let their dogs shit all over the sidewalk.

ahem. the cleaners are over right now -- i went out to get coffee and leave them be. i'll tip well.

these aren't really "my" messes though; the last tenant didn't do a particularly thorough job cleaning the place before she left, and the building manager didn't respond to my request to clean up before i moved in. i've been meaning to do it myself, but i've been busy.

Grimly, don't spend money on the spray

... bit late now ;)

still. it's done a fantastic job.

a dab of bleach or diluted bleach on the sponge does just as well. (It works on the orange stuff in a bathroom too

what is this orange stuff of which you speak?

Yeah, Jody, I think we have different issues in that area, cos your concerns don't totally resonate for me. But I hear you anyway! Enjoy the beautiful beautiful results.

Ha ha Suzy very OTM upthread re. style of bullying :)

Wish there was a different thread to revive, but there you go.

Due to some recent crazy circumstances i'm going to need a cleaner for at least the next couple of months. Does anyone in the London area have any recomendations? Also how much should hiring someone cost?

OH MY GOD I HAD MY LANDLADIES' HOUSECLEANER DO MY APT OVER THANKSGIVING AND I DON'T THINK I CAN LIVE HERE ANYMORE

WTF WTF ALL MY STUFF IS NOT ON THE FLOOR

WHERE IT IS

THAT'S NOT AN APARTMENT IT'S A SPACE STATION

/londonthread

Thinking of setting this up for my brother- he keeps a slovenly house, his daughter stays three or four days a week,I've got concerns.

Anyone have any experience of doing this for a third party, is tehre any way for it not to come across patrician nb he's my younger brother so it wouldn't be a deal breaker to come across bossyboots