Hawaii Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Cleaning Service?
I was thinking about having someone come in and do a really good thorough cleaning of our house. Yes, I know, makes me sound lazy. But I would just like to try it!
My question is: Do you actually clean your house before they come? Maybe tidy up a bit so that they have room to clean? How much am I supposed to do? And, do I tip?
Re: Cleaning Service?
i highly recommend it. it's so much easier to just do maintenance* than it is to do the thorough cleaning! when we did it, we did tidy up, just so they could actually clean and not trip over stuff
since it was a one-time thing, we did tip them, though I can't remember exactly how much. maybe close to 20%?
* not that i would know, since after we had some company do the thorough cleaning, i promptly hired Nick, who cleans like, 3 of my friends' houses. he comes every other week, and i jokingly call him the 3rd person in our marriage - b/c it makes me SO much happier, hah. i don't tip Nick, but I give him $100 every Christmas.
It depends on what you want. Right now we don't have one as an effort to save a little money until after the baby is born). For about 8 months I used the same lady as some of my friends and she does different things at all our houses.
At mine we only want her to "clean" stuff. No organizing or laundry or stuff like that. So she cleans the floors and bathrooms (my 2 least favorite things since my whole house is hardwood and the bathrooms are totally tiled everywhere). She also cleans the appliances, dusts and then has a small list of things she doesn't do every single time like dusting/cleaning the blinds, windowsills, trimwork, vacuuming under couch cushions, etc.
We don't have her do anything in the finished basement b/c there isn't a whole lot down there. When she came it was for about 4 hours every other week (1600 sq ft. of cleaning area, however we don't use about 1/2 of that space - guest room, baby's room, "formal living room").
We make sure everything is picked up off countertops, dishes put away, no laundry on the floor, etc but I don't clean anything. If I spatter spaghetti sauce down the front of the stove I obviously clean that up as it happens, but I wouldn't go out of my way to make sure there were no small splashes of stuff on the stove top. I think we are generally neat people to begin with though.
For one of my friends she is literally there all day once a week and will organize everything, do laundry, wash sheets, make the beds, and on an on.
Because she just does this on her own, and not as a cleaning service she set a price after visiting our house and doing one cleaning and was up front about saying she doesn't want tips because she wants us to think her price is fair and not worry about giving extra. When we discontinued her services a couple of months ago we gave her a bonus in the hopes that she would want to come back next summer.
Totally awesome to have someone else come in and do a "deep clean" every now and then. We only did it a few times in our old house (no use having someone come in to clean our current construction zone!), but we picked up before she came without breaking out any actual cleaning supplies (i.e. no wiping down counters, sweeping, etc. -- that's why we had someone come in).
I think the standard rule on tipping is that you tip people who work for someone else's cleaning company, but you don't necessarily tip someone who owns his or her own business. It's ultimately up to you though, obviously. Yay clean house!
oh yeah - i agree with Robbi. depends on what you want them to do. i do all the laundry and dishes, but if there are clean dishes in the dishwasher, Nick will put the dishes away. or he'll fold the laundry if I've left it lying around, but i generally try to take care of it before he comes. but really, he's here to *clean* - vacuum, dust, sweep, clean the kitchen and bathrooms, etc. he'll do windows every once in a while.
We recently started having a woman come in once a month. She's super affordable and we heard about her through the grapevine. We pay cash and don't tip.
Our house is generally clean and tidy, so we *save* the cleaning lady for all the stuff we dread and that wouldn't otherwise get done regularly -- cleaning our screens and windows, wiping down blinds, scrubbing tubs, tiles and toilets, etc. DH and I make a list beforehand, so we both have input into what gets accomplished. She comes for 4 hours. Best investment ever, because it gets the job done, we can stop feeling badly about things being dirty and it gives us time to do more important stuff!
Like what the other ladies said, I highly recommend it :-). We recently started having cleaners come in every other month to do deep cleaning. Our house is also generally clean. DH and I do a good job in maintaining the house clean and tidy (umm not this week though! so busy and we're rarely home). The owner of the cleaning company is my friend's brother so I know him.
I do tidy up the house a lil bit before they come in. I make sure there are no stuff laying around the floor so they can clean/vacuum with no obstruction.
I've been trying to convince B that we should do this since we rarely make the time to deep clean. In fact, it's pretty sad how often we clean our house. And with a baby on the way, I know I'm not going to want to do it. I don't mind the day to day stuff so much either. But getting down on the ground and cleaning the little nooks and crannies is not my cup of tea.
How much does it typically cost? I'm thinking once a month would be nice, and totally worth it.
It depends on how big your place is. For us, we have 3 rooms and 2.5 bath, we pay $150.
Ericka, who do you use?
We hired a lady to come clean before Alexa was born, then again two weeks ago before my family arrived. We'd like to get her coming regularly. She is amazing and does such a great job.
She is on her own, doesn't speak a word of English, so we have to call her sister to arrange for her to come. She charges us $100. Last time, we gave her a $100 check and $20 cash. But that was because she came last minute and it's Christmas and she is so cheap. I think we'll probably keep doing that if she keeps coming.
I called Mayflower Maids and Jiffy Maids they they each quoted $160-220 for a first-time deep clean and then $135-150 for biweekly cleans.
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
My parents used to do this every two weeks, or at least once a month. I thought it was totally worth it. My mom would tidy up before they come, so they had room to clean and so that you put some things away where you want them to be, and just have the cleaners take care of the actually dusting, scrubbing, cleaning, etc.
MH and I actually haven't gotten it done before, mainly because when we were living in our house, we weren't that busy, so we just did it ourselves. And now even though we're much busier, we're currently in a 1br apt, so it's so small that I don't feel like it justifies hiring cleaners, especially if our Roomba already does the floors for us =P But otherwise, I would totally do it.
Thanks for all the helpful advice!
Now I want to hire someone even more! I keep hearing, "its ok, i'll just do the cleaning" from the hubby and i know he means well...but i want an actual deep clean (scrubbing, bathrooms/showers, floors, etc.).
So excited. Thinking about getting someone in by next week. Hope that they don't charge too much!
I keep getting this, too. But does it actually get done? Yeah, right. Not often enough, anyways. Let us know how it goes!