The real question is, “do married couples fight over a dirty house?” The answer to that question is yes! Especially in today’s world where both spouses typically work long hours. When it comes time to clean the house, nobody wants to get moving and it can cause a lot of stress between the couple.
The short answer is “maybe”! While the difference may be small to some, depending on who you ask, there could be dramatic difference. For those of us that grew up during the Brady Bunch era, we think of Alice, the live-in housekeeper that provides cleaning services along with cooking and a little bit of childcare! Many people nowadays associate housekeepers solely with cleaning services thanks to personal chefs becoming more popular as domestic employees.
There is no set standard for the price of housekeeping across the United States. Costs of living are drastically different in different parts of the country, which leads to radically different prices. Also, the way that housekeepers charge can differ from business to business. There are some general rules of thumb, but they’re not ironclad. For example, you will likely pay more if you hire a cleaning company as opposed to an independent contractor. There will be some added assurances if you hire a company but you will pay more. Here’s how much you should be paying, in general terms.
If you are looking to hire a house cleaner who works for a company, you’ll see several different sources recommend that you hire one is bonded and insured. While there are many questions to ask a cleaning contractor before hiring someone, this is definitely one of the more important ones. It’s considered incredibly important for their trustworthiness and reliability that they be bonded and insured. However, many sources fail to adequately explain what it means to be bonded and insured. So, here is what it means.
Many of us have considered hiring house cleaners in the past. Most of us would love to have someone help keep our homes clean and tidy. What we don’t know is “when is the right time?” Here are a few questions to ask yourself before hiring a maid service!
As busy adults have many issues throughout the day that add stress to our lives. Paying bills, feeding the family, keeping the yard work up, etc. One way to quickly reduce some of your daily stress is to hire a maid service to keep your home clean in ways you could never imagine!
House cleaning is one of the oldest professions of the industrialized world. Once workers began to spend their time working at industries away from the home and a middle class began to emerge, people began to realize they needed someone to help them around the house. The house cleaning industry emerged and has been largely unchanged ever since. For 150 years, housekeepers have come over and cleaned and then left. That’s about all there is to it. However, there are still trends that are emerging in the industry.
1 — It’s Easier Than Ever
One of the trends in the cleaning industry is a trend across basically all service jobs. The housekeepers are making it easier than ever for you to get your house cleaned. Many of them work through apps that you can download on your phone. Some of them can be found, hired, and evaluated on an app. That provides you with some protection if you’re hiring a freelancer who is not affiliated with a larger business. Others simply request payment and get paid through apps on the phone. That means you won’t have to worry about writing checks, withdrawing money, or getting your housekeeper’s money on time. You can just make the transaction from your phone.
2 — Free Cleaning Tools
Many housekeepers are giving their customers free cleaning tools such as proprietary cleaning solutions. They might give away branded scrub brushes, dusters, and rubber gloves. There are a few reasons why this trend has been growing. For one, it is a way for a housekeeping company to advertise for free. Every time you clean up a spill on your kitchen counter, you’ll see their logo. It gives you their contact information right at hand when you’re thinking about cleaning.
Also, it encourages customers to keep their homes a little bit cleaner than they might have otherwise. That makes it easier for housekeepers when they do come over.
3 — Green Cleaning
Eco-friendly cleaning has been growing in popularity as well. Eco-friendly cleaning typically means that house cleaners will use chemicals that are safe to be discarded. Many house cleaners have been exploring different ways to make use of vinegar, for example. Acetic acid is the primary ingredient in vinegar; at high concentrations, it’s a fairly strong acid. It can be used to clean everything from ovens to windows.
These are just three of the most popular trends in the cleaning industry; as technology changes, the industry is constantly innovating.
Hiring a maid seems like the kind of thing that you have to have a lot of money to accomplish. It’s obviously another line in the budget; so, it stands to reason that hiring a maid will end up costing you money. However, that might not be the case. Is it possible that hiring a maid will actually save you money in the long run? It’s possible.
How Much Time You Spend Cleaning
The basic contours of the calculation involve what are called opportunity costs. When you take time out of your day to clean your home, you are foregoing some other activity in that time. The things you are not doing are the opportunity costs. If you are skipping time spent relaxing or watching television, then the opportunity cost is not quite as apparent. However, if you’re taking time off from work to get home an hour early to clean or if you work from home, the opportunity cost will be the lost productivity. So, you first need to calculate how much time you spend cleaning your house. Most estimates say that time spent cleaning averages to about an hour a day. That’s usually not evenly distributed, but it averages to about 7 to 10 hours a week. That’s 28 to 40 hours a month.
Some people spend more time and some spend less; if this seems far off of what you spend, you should time yourself while cleaning to figure it out. Once you’ve done that, you need to place a value on your time. If you routinely come home an hour early from work to clean, you can just calculate how much you would make if you stayed at work. That’s pretty simple. If not, you should do some calculations to determine how much you could reasonably expect to make in that hour. That’s the monetary value of your opportunity cost.
How Much The Maid Charges
Once you’ve valuated your opportunity cost, you should look into how much the maid charges. Research shows the average maid charges between $25 and $35 per hour. Others charge by the square foot. Research shows that most people spend about $150 per visit. They’ll typically come to your house once or twice a month.
Then, it’s time to just do some math. If you spend 10 hours a week cleaning and you value your time at $15 per hour, that’s $150 in opportunity cost. You could hire a maid once a month and break even. You also have to consider how much it’s worth it to you not to have to clean all the time. A maid could be more affordable than it appears at first.
Twenty, or even ten, years ago, house cleaning service was considered a luxury. It was something that you could pay for instead of cleaning your own house on the weekends. That’s definitely true thirty or more years ago. Now, with the job market and the economy the way they are, it has moved from a luxury and closer to a necessity. There are several converging factors that make it a brilliant time to become a house cleaner. For one, jobs have come to rely less on the 9 to 5 schedule. Many people have steady employment that is just not on that schedule. Others work in what is called the gig economy; they work haphazard hours on an unpredictable schedule. Also, two income households are become more normal than ever before. So, you might have a married couple in a house but neither one of them has time to clean. Those are all realities that make it a great time to become a house cleaner.
Social Media Is a Must
Social media a few years ago was something that was nice to have but not necessary. Customers now want to be able to look you up, look at recommendations from past customers, and then contact you. They also want to be able to type to you; they don’t usually want to talk. There are several reasons that people have become less comfortable talking on the phone. For one, typing leaves a record. You can quote prices, send data, and recommend different links. A strong social media presence makes it easier to contact you and to share information; that makes it more likely you’ll get hired.
Expectations Are Higher
Freelance markets have exploded on the internet. You can find someone to do just about anything you can think of. That means that there are dozens of people in your area who are cleaning houses poorly and for very low wages. That sounds like it might be a bad thing,but it can actually work in your favor. Most customers have experience with inferior service from a poorly-paid freelancer. That means they’re now willing to pay higher wages but their expectations will be higher. If you can deliver on those expectations, you’ll have an easier time getting paid well. A lower barrier to entry means that lower quality work has grown; you’ll look great in comparison.
Now is a great time for a quality house cleaner to grow their business.
Renewability and sustainability have been growing focuses for the entirety of the 21st century. Consumers as well as companies have grown, on the whole, more aware of the impact they are having on the environment. While often used interchangeably, renewability and sustainability are not exactly the same thing. A renewable resource is one that will regenerate on its own or can at least be regenerated. For example, trees are renewable resources. When left alone, trees obviously will reproduce. Also, companies can plant trees to offset the trees they fell. However, there are also sustainability concerns. Sustainability refers to the ability of a practice to continue in perpetuity. For example, trees might be renewable but if a company strips forests with no consideration of good practices, that will not be sustainable. The trees will not regenerate fast enough to offset the damage done. The same is true of cleaning chemicals.
Green Cleaning Chemicals
Many housekeepers and housekeeping companies are switching to green cleaning chemicals for several reasons. In many cases, it’s simple economics. Green chemicals are sometimes less expensive because they are less processed. Sometimes, it is a matter of practicality; some house cleaners are sensitive to the harsh chemicals used in cleaning solutions. Lastly, some are choosing green chemicals because that’s what they would like their company to represent.
What Are Green Chemicals?
Green cleaning chemicals have several characteristics. Some of them are focused on the chemicals themselves; those would be solutions that are made from renewable resources that are harvested sustainably. For example, many oven cleaners contain fossil fuels. That’s part of the reason they’re so caustic. Those are obviously not sustainable or renewable. You would replace that fossil fuel oven cleaner with a renewable resource. Acids derived from fruits are very common; when refined properly, a natural acid or base can cut through the toughest grease.
Other chemicals are focused on the manufacturing or shipping involved. They will be focused on how the chemical is produced and shipped. For example, if you have an all-natural cleaning solution that uses inefficient machines and is shipped halfway around the world with fossil fuels, it could easily negate the cleaning chemical benefits. That’s why many housekeepers are also focused on locally-sourced chemicals. The closer to its final destination a product is created, the less fuel is consumed in its transport.
Housekeepers are on the cutting edge of which products work and which don’t. That’s why you can trust their choices for cleaning chemicals.
