(no subject)

[moominmolly]

[Poll #1574294]

Comments

[epilady.livejournal.com]

There are some things I am very, very good at. Cleaning the house is not one of those things. Having Kate come once a week for the last 3 years has changed our lives, no kidding.

[cutieperson]

i occasionally do, but not on any set schedule.

[goat.livejournal.com]

We used to have someone come in every few months when we were in Somerville. Now it's a luxury we can't afford. I'd love to have someone come in even monthly. That would be awesome.

[cinnabarine.livejournal.com]

We used to when we lived in a coop with 3 other people.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I never had, but that was already the arrangement of the household I moved to, and so now sometimes I come home and the house is magically clean! This does not, however, stop me from semi-obsessively wiping down the kitchen and my bathroom.

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

I found hiring someone to clean to be an excellent way to no longer fight with my spouse about cleaning. However, we disagreed about other things, so I no longer have a spouse nor someone to clean the house.

[diatom.livejournal.com]

you know moominmolly? aaah, the world is small!

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I have gotten to the point where I have mostly gotten over my hangups about it, and I am willing to spend the money on it, but I suck at outsourcing.

The one time I did try to have someone over to do some deep cleaning she half-cleaned my kitchen floor in four hours. This has set me back so far that I would rather live in a filthy house than try again at the moment.

My current solution is to get mathhobbit to clean my kitchen floor in exchange for my doing favors for her. That just leaves my upstairs bathroom as a microbiology experiment.

[metagnat.livejournal.com]

Part of me wishes I could afford it, but I'm also very weirded out by the idea of strange people going through my house on a regular basis.

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

This is the luxury I miss most from my pre-kid days, and will absolutely pay for as soon as i reasonably can.

[beah.livejournal.com]

We have someone come once a month.

When I was working outside the house full time, it made sense because neither I nor mrf_arch felt like cleaning was the best use of our limited spare time, and because we could make what it cost to have someone else clean in an hour, but it would take us many hours to do the cleaning ourselves.

Now that I work from home and am in the house constantly, I have ample opportunity to make messes, and far fewer to clean (though I do try to at least pick up after myself). This means the house gets dirty faster, and then I get distracted from my work by thinking about (or actually acting on) how much it needs to be cleaned. So we've kept the cleaners on, allowing me to focus on my work more.

It's not a panacea, but it is an affordable luxury that makes many things easier for us.

[entrope.livejournal.com]

You might like this: http://reesabrown.com/2010/06/04/cancer-chronicles-throwing-money-at-the-double-standard/

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Hiring someone to clean for me was the thing I did first, as soon as I had excess income. The only issue is finding someone reliable. Most services give me the squicks, wondering if the cleaners (always women, always foreigners, almost always non-English speakers) had been human trafficked. Usually I found an individual, right now I have a service about which I have no qualms whatsoever. But I prefer an individual and am still looking for one.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

I don't want to completely dismiss the concern, and it's a laudable one, but do the traffickers even do maid service? Seems like the risk/reward structure here would strongly favor prostitution

(Possibly we're using different definitions of "trafficked".)

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Yes as of a month ago or so. We admitted we were just overwhelmed by the task and needed help.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I have too many weird things in my house to let a hapless stranger clean around them. How do I know said cleaner won't steal a pleasure device?

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

There are professional cleaners amongst our community, actually. They won't steal your dildos, but they might arrange them neatly in order of size. ;-)

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

[x] no, but because i have bad allergies, i vacuum every week, so at least the floors and carpets (etc) are clean. the rest of the place...

[inahandbasket]

We're on the verge of doing so... thus I am cos.

[gretchens.livejournal.com]

I would love to, I think -- my mom had a cleaner come once a week when we were kids, and says it was considered part of adding to their home's value to do that, as well as to our family. However, it's not so much the floors and sinks that bug me about my house as much as the random piles of crap (preschool art, much?) and cleaners don't do that, and I'd have to pick it up anyway, and then if I do that, I might as well clean the surfaces left behind. While I've been on mat leave I've been tackling these very macro projects, like I cleaned one junk drawer (but the counter is still piled with Ing's masterpieces) and I did her bookshelf in the living room (she tends to pile books in there, I put them in with the spines out) but there are still seashells, a Margarita's sombero, a sippy cup, an old cell phone, and a box of letter stamps (on top of another piece of Ing Art) on the coffee table.

COMPLETELY unrelated, I am reading "Ask For It," which is the followup to "Women Don't Ask" because it's been in my head since you mentioned it here in March, and while I have the new title and will be returning in a new capacity, no one has said anything about salary yet, and I've gone from "hallelujah, a new situation, that's enough" to thinking "wait, wait, this is a professional position and leaving a bad officemate behind is not enough in the way of compensation!" Anyway, I skipped the Why book and went straight to the How, but will probably check out Women Don't Ask next. And I've become totally enraged and empowered and convinced THREE OTHER PEOPLE in the last 24 hours to start reading it, too, and we are all feeling it. Poor HR. They are about to get served. :P

[beah.livejournal.com]

For us, having someone come in to clean gives us a great incentive to do the non-cleaning housekeeping chores, like pick up and put away the piles of piles. Doing that takes enough time and energy that we never want to clean after, but is perfect for right before a pro cleaning. If we don't do it, either the surfaces under the piles won't get cleaned, or worse, the cleaning crew will ruin our carefully crafted piling system by stacking everything neatly in one ginormous pile so they can get at what's underneath.

[contessagrrl.livejournal.com]

(And plan on doing this again once we move.)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

awesome roommate has picked up the job for now :)

[coraline]

yeah, but it's still "paying for a cleaner" :)

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

maid comes in once a week and mops all the floors (the one chore i really can't stand doing)

[dreams-of-wings.livejournal.com]

we used to have somebody come in just to a deep clean every two or three months. Now that my hands are bad, we get somebody in at least once a month because Tish is way more interested in forking over some of his money than spending his precious free time cleaning house, and I simply can't. if you need a recommendation, I enthusiastically endorse the services of Mike who lives at And/or

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Contact information for Mike at And/or, please?

[diatom.livejournal.com]

dang. cos didn't write in to explain what that option is.

i used to, started on the request of one of the subletters, who paid for it. she left, i kept it going less frequently. the economy tanked, and i started feeling guilty about having a stranger in my house once a month.

we're trying out a chore list, as the level of funk has reached unacceptable heights. if that doesn't work...might go back to having someone in every so often. ;p

i've also considered wash-n-fold, for when i'm just too busy to walk down to the laundromat...

i do feel a little class guilt, and that the fact that in this neighborhood all the cleaners are latina... *feels weird* i feel like my household is more humble than some of the fancy ppl in my neighborhood....

[harimad.livejournal.com]

The flip side of class guilt: someone else is earning a living because of you.

The latina issue is separate, I agree. But I don't see that I make the issue any better by *not* hiring someone to perform a legal, safe service that I want. My mother's cleaning lady didn't finish high school in the Philippines. Her three children all went to college in the US.

[rosefox]

We've talked about it. We just haven't gotten around to actually finding someone now that we can afford it.

[qanga.livejournal.com]

When I lived in a shared house right after the divorce the woman that owned the house had a cleaning person that did the kitchen and the bathrooms and vacuumed. Man I miss having my bathroom cleaned by somebody else.

[maighread.livejournal.com]

I just started having someone come in this past week. It's amazing.

I'd already refused to feel guilty about it because there's just not enough time for us to get it all done, plus, yay, it's good to pay some small business person trying to keep going in this economy.

But then when I came home to a sparkly clean house and realized how relaxed I was, not stressing about finding time to clean and the state of the mess, I realized that the cost is about the same as an hour long massage, but I get a clean house at the end!