by Claire
No, I do not have one but boy do I really want one! About 6 years ago, I had someone come in every other week just to really clean the house. I made a point to instruct the housekeepers to not pick up the kids’ rooms because we are all responsible for doing the pick up, daily chores. It is the scrubbing and sweeping and mopping and dusting and…and…and that is just not happening around here to any successful degree and I want help!
Now…with that said…I want to share that the children DO have rotating chores on a chore board. We had been very good about following this but in recent months, we have fallen off a bit. It is on the “to do” list to get us all back on board. The rotating chore list is great for us. We have 12 “to do’s” ranging from the good, to the bad to the ugly. These are not “daily chores” of picking up rooms, making beds, unpacking lunchboxes, etc…but instead taking out garbage, emptying dishwasher, loading dishwasher, dusting, sweeping, bathrooms, folding laundry, setting table, clearing table, cleaning out cars and the dreaded “backyard dog poo pickup.” Each child has 3 chores per week. We divide them in such a way that everyone has one they really dislike each week. If the youngest one has chores that are sometimes difficult for her to do alone, one of the older ones steps in to help. This worked like a charm for quite some time but even so the house needed a “deep cleaning” at least once a month. The kids even joke about “oh I am almost done with the dog poo pickup and then it is all YOURS!”
My “Money Mate” at the office (she doesn’t yet know I’ve bestowed this title upon her but she is my support system during the work week so this is what I have taken to calling her–) and I were discussing the issue of housecleaning today. I shared that I was tired of the MESS that I can’t seem to get a complete handle on and that I felt guilty wanting a housekeeper…but I do! Well, it just so happened that MM (Money Mate) had just read a blog post on how hiring a maid can actually save you money. Time IS money so I know there is that factor but what I didn’t think about is what I could do with the time I do save…which is to save more money or make more money…something to think about!
I would have to make some budget shifts to make this happen and I think I am ready to at least scroll through the budget to see where I might free up some money to do this. I am sick sick sick of cleaning my house.
Born and raised in Texas. I’ve at least driven through every state in the US courtesy of a roadtrip loving Dad.
I’m single with two children and a good parenting relationship with their father.
I am a “life is just half full of funny” kinda gal. Humor is my saving grace and I am thankful for it every single day. I have a strong Catholic faith and am thankful for that foundation.
I read a lot for a living but still enjoy a good book. I love biographies but in recent years have found the need for fun fictional books–sadly, for a long time I just didn’t enjoy fiction!
I love live theatre of any kind–from local productions to Broadway.
I love to scrapbook and pride myself in my kids’ albums.
I love being a mom but also love my career. I’m blessed to have found a balance allowing me to be at everything my kids need and want me to be at–while also having a career.
Favorite Quotes: Well behaved women rarely make history.
Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. -James Bryant Conant
I don’t know what housekeepers go for in your area, but time IS money, and if it were to free you up to be with your family, or take more time to shop for the best deals, or enhance your life, then maybe it’s an expense that’s worth it?
Maybe you could compromise with yourself and hire someone who comes in once a month to deep clean.
I mean, really, how clean does a house really have to be?
Thank you scarr and Holly! I really like the idea of once a month. I grew up with an obsessive cleaner so I have no desire for it to be sterile…but dust bunnies the size of a small pet are getting old! 🙂
I have a housekeeping company clean our condo once a month TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!!! And I had them when I was paying off my debt and I don’t care who thinks it is dumb to have a cleaning service when you are in debt it was my one treat for myself during that very difficult time. Our cleaning service charges $95 and boy do they do a fantastic job cleaning! As I said earlier, I only have them come once a month because it is just my husband and I and we manage to keep the place tidy for almost the whole month.
Growing up, my parents didn’t have a lot of money, but they always took great care of the few things they did own including their home. My mom paid a lady from church to clean our main floor twice a month (we had a very small house but my parents took great pride in caring for it). There are churches or religious organizations that do house cleaning for a discounted price, maybe sniff around to see?
I am a little shocked that you got two positive comments about this. Here’s a third :). We hired a cleaning person and have debated over and over again of it is counter productive with trying to reduce debt. Every time we both agree that it is worth the quality time we get to spend together and not scrubbing down the house. We have trimmed in other ways do we can afford this one luxury. Glad to hear that others agree that sometimes spending some money really does free up some quality time for family.
Don’t forget that not only will you be saving yourself some time but you will also be relieving yourself of stress and I suspect making everyone in your house happier if the cleaning is truest detested.
One thing you might want to consider if you can’t fit a housekeeper regularly into your budget at the moment is hiring a company to come blitz the place – and then bringing back the chore chart. I have a chore chart with my housemate (we’re both adults) and it’s a simple system but effective, plus we have a deal that whoever’s doing a chore at the time can blast music until they’re finished to make it more tolerable 🙂
I have been in a debt recovery program for about 4 years now. I have had a housekeeper come once a week for 4 hours this entire 4 years. I run two businesses. She does the floors, the bathrooms, dusting, changes the sheets, wipes down all appliances. I know I could throw about $3000.00 more a year at debt, but I need my sanity and you are right. Time is money. I can sit in my shop and make 35-65 dollars an hour, why would I do the deep cleaning, when I can clearly make a profit having someone else do this?
I totally agree. We had someone come every other week for a couple of years and we loved it. There is nothing like coming home to a super clean house. We only stopped when I had the baby and it was just too much to keep up with the baby and the maid. (we were having to clean for the maid to come clean, it was a nightmare) Now that she’s almost one, I can see us bringing one back at least once a month in the near future. No one loves to scrub toilets, know what I mean?
See, I just don’t get this at all. Sure, time is money. But don’t you need the actual money more at this point? When did having someone clean your house become so common? This used to be something that only really wealthy people did, and now everyone thinks they need it? I just don’t get it.
I completely agree with this. It’s become the common thing now or dare I say it-the “in” thing. Those that I know that have one tend to brag about it as if it’s a rite of passage or something into “I’ve made it” land.
Not to be mean or snarky to Claire, but I’m just really finding a disconnect here. Why spend all the time clipping coupons, hunting down the best deals, cutting your TV package to an antenna with 6 or 7 channels, etc and then turn around and drop several hundred on someone to clean your toilets??
It seems the kids have their assigned chores and that’s good, but consider the message you are also sending them with hiring a cleaning service. I know with our teen he would view that as meaning we have a lot of money to blow and keeping him on board with a “debt payoff” diet would be nearly impossible.
You do not have to be wealthy to afford a housecleaner and you don’t have to be out of touch to want your home to look nice. Making room in ths budget for that is not crazy. There are many options available for those services some much less spendy than the ohers.
No it is not a need it is a want buf I don’t believe it is a ridiculous want. Claire and her husband work very hard and if they can make the cuts they should so they can have thiis one incredibly useful luxory great for them. Also I hope she and other mom’s who pay for help cleaning never feel guilty for buying something that makes their lives easiers because of judgey mcjudgers.
“Judgey mcjudgers”? Really? Having someone clean your house is a luxury. It really is. That’s not a judgement.
Hiring out housework has become more mainstream and a lot of people seem to make excuses to fit it into a budget, but frankly if you are 90K in debt, I really don’t think should be part of the budget.
Justify that you are still paying for cable because that is your only entertainment left? – sure. Keep one small-scale splurge to keep yourself sane during debt reduction? – ok. But adding an additional expense? One that is $100 a month or so? That is truly a luxury.
And like many people I know have told me (and mentioned here), they have found that the quality of cleaning drops after a little while.
If someone is truly living in a complete mess, maybe consider it as a one-time thing to bring things up to standard and then maintain it. It’s really not a big deal to keep things clean.
I believe it is a luxury. I don’t have cable and havent since I moved out of my parent’s home over ten years ago. I went years wihhout internet service just recently purchasing it because I am an online student. I see nothing wrong with cutting one luxury out for a one that may cost less – for me that included cable tv, internet, gourmet coffees, cosmetics, new clothes, new car and going out.
I don’t know anyone that pays for a cleaning service they aren’t happy with. The people you know must like wasting money. If a service dissapponts me – cleaning, oil change, what have you I won’t continue to pay for it and if you do not have the cajones to tell a bisiness you are unhappy with heir work than that is your own fault.
I personally don’t believe anyone in any debt should have a cleaning service unless they are prepared to make cuts. But I feel that away about internet service, electronics, eating out, and any other possible luxury. And all of those things and more are luxuries.
Could not agree more on the declining performance of housekeepers! If they aren’t doing a good job…there are plenty of people out there who will! What you talk about here is what I am thinking of doing scarr…I have eliminated the salon entirely, I recently dramatically cut back on cosmetics, I have not bought any new clothing or shoes since January 1, cable is gone, couponing is up, I’m totally killing the grocery budget…I haven’t paid to go scrapbooking anywhere (this was a regular thing for me to do pre-debt-elimination program…)I really could go on and on here. I’m thinking I want to put $100 of the likely $300-$800 a month I am saving overall to a clean house! Thanks to Joe’s post I think I had an “A-Ha!” moment. I spent 5 hours last Saturday morning trying to dig out from under the dust and scrub this house…with hubby’s help (the kids were with their other parents) and then b/c of scheduling I had to get out to do errands but I was unprepared to do so! Then I spent more b/c I was a disorganized mess!
It’s all about priorities and if freeing yourself from cleaning the house on the weekends etc. is worth it to you, go for it!
Personally, I would rather pay for our DirectTV package, smartphones, etc during our debt paydown than hiring someone to clean my house, but we’re homebodies so those things are priorities to us and since we spend a lot of time at home, we have plenty of time to clean as we go.
I’m surprised by all of the positive comments on this. I’ve always considered a housecleaning service a luxury and have always had issues with paying someone to do something I can do myself, usually because they won’t do it as good as I would. I’ve heard from friends who hire housecleaning services that they tend to get lazy after awhile and cut corners.
I do agree though that time is money.
Actually, my experience is that most people are really negative and judgmental when it comes to hiring help. Especially among the more frugal. I don’t think anyone said we *need* it, but I do have to roll my eyes when people with perpetual car payments and “more expensive than my hired help” latte factors make snide comments. My money – I get to decide what to do with it.
That said, if you lived without this long, it seems a luxury that can wait a while longer, considering the debt situation. I think this would be a GREAT reward for when all the credit card is paid off, for example. Just looking at your side bar, it can’t be that long before you knock out cc2-7???
On the flip side, I’d choose sanity every day. If it somehow saves you money, that does need to be considered, too.
I am completely torn about this. I have gotten to know the cleaning ladies that come twice a month to a friend’s home (I take care of her mother-in-law, who lives with them). They change sheets, wash windows, floors, kitchen, bathrooms, etc. My friend works full-time, her husband works more than full-time and travels a lot, and they simply do not have time for deep cleaning. Their house is so pleasant to be in, and they don’t have to worry about the big cleaning jobs on the little down time they have. So, I can see where, in a home where both spouses work, it is important to have someone do the big stuff. I know my friend pays about $120 twice a month for a cleaning crew of 5 to do her house.
On the other hand, being devoted to paying off debt is important, as well. If Claire has lowered her expenses by quite bit, she might be just using up her savings on the cleaning crew. On the other hand, she will be returning from long days at work to a clean home, ready to tackle the challenges of the family and their busy lives instead of fretting about the messy house. *sigh* It’s a hard choice.
Claire, I would really love to see your budget. I think it would be really helpful to you and your husband to have it all written down in one place, so you can more effectively assess things like the value of hiring a cleaning lady. 🙂
Great points, Claire in CA.
Claire–we do have it written down on a google spreadsheet that we review several times a week and then in great detail Sundays. I haven’t found a convenient way to share that on the blog, but I am working on it. As I said somewhere, we need to more specifically define budget line items but we have already started that process. I’ll share when it is in a concise form—just wanted you to know that we have everything written down. That is how I know how much I have saved with the complete elimination of the salon, dramatic cut on cosmetics, no scrapbooking events, no clothing or shoe purchases since January, etc. I think this week has really made me realize how out of sorts I am feeling (hence no planning and then the bad $ weekend) because my house is not in good shape. I’m not hiring a cleaning crew tomorrow…but I am getting my info gathered to make an informed decision. Thanks for the input!
I am one who would have pooh-poohed the housekeeper idea in the past. However. . . . A few years ago, I made the decision to work less than a 40 hour week (about 34 hours) so that I would have time to clean. The peace I feel with having a clean house is amazing! Before, I always felt guilty about the many things that weren’t getting done. However, after awhile, I realized how much of a pay cut I took to do something that I don’t really enjoy. I would have been money ahead to continue working 40 hours and pay a housekeeper. So, now I am looking to switch back to full time. When that happens, (hopefully soon) a housekeeper will be a new line item in the budget!
Okay, there is nothing wrong with hiring a housekeeper – if you have the money to pay for it. I think you need to step back and take a look at your situation. Have you figured out how long it will take you to pay off your debt? What is the best case scenario? Do you know where you’ll be financially next month, in 6 months, in a year?
Debt is an emergency. You cannot afford to hire someone to clean your house. Period. There are plenty of people living in your house to designate one Saturday (or evening or whatever) to everyone pitches in to clean the house.
Why don’t you try it this way – set aside the money to pay for a house cleaner but don’t hire one for two months. Let that money grow – then take a look at whether you really want to spend all that money when it’s not really that hard to do the work yourselves. Maybe it will be a couple hundred dollars – or more – that could go toward debt or into your emergency fund.
This is a great idea, actually. I may implement it myself!
Yes Karen we have figured out the best case scenario and I posted about the worst case scenario weeks back. As I said in my replies to other posts—the chaos of a messy house is creating a disorganized life at the moment and a disorganized life inevitably costs more money than an organized one. I really like the idea someone posted about getting a deep cleaning done and then seeing how things go….then maybe I could hire a service once a quarter or something. I don’t think I’m completely out of line with considering this option given that I have eliminated huge chunks of spending.
Yes, you have eliminated huge chunks of spending. But you could organize your life yourself for free. You owe more than $90,000, how in the world can you tell yourself that you can “afford” to add something like housecleaning? You barely have $2000 in an emergency fund – what if one of you lost your jobs? Had a health emergency?
It’s great that you’ve made the progress you have – but you seem to think this means you can “consider” something that, while nice, is completely frivolous spending. Isn’t this the kind of thinking that got you into this mess in the first place?
I’m torn – you both work and have lots of children, so I understand that deep cleaning is necessary as is time for children, so I want to say go for it. But it’s a slippery slope to eating out on Fridays, dog walker, etc. Also “time is money” only works if you’d actually be working instead of cleaning – but you’re not, you’d clean while not at work. You are putting so much effort into dozens of dollars (e.g. couponing), that it just seems like you’d be undoing that effort. I don’t know what your budget looks like, but a once a month compromise might work.
Housekeepers – the gateway drug to eating out! I would disagree with this. We all have plenty of priorities in life, and very few people put cleaning high on the list. Yeah, Claire could do it herself, and has. But, if she’s willing to give up other luxuries (that some might consider necessities) so that she doesn’t have to do major cleaning, I see no problem with that.
I agree with Karen. There are plenty of people in your house to all pitch in and if you do it all together, it’s way more fun and everyone sees the benefit of it. My 8-year-old asks me to time her 🙂 Also, if we devote a morning to cleaning as a family and get all our stuff done, then we get to do “whatever we want” afterward – which usually involves reading 🙂 It is an important message, I think, just like your debt reduction conversations with the kids, that “we’re all in this together” really means just that.
My soon to be 8-year-old is all about cleaning too—she loves it. The 12 and 13 year olds loved it when they were 8 too. The 17 year old believes he was never 8 and certainly never liked cleaning. Ha. My point is I can get the kids on board with a lot of stuff but I also have to be realistic…we are a blended family with 3 teenage boys. They are all good about pitching in on what I spoke about…we simply are not in a situation right now for me to move them all to a “fun” clean up Saturday morning!
I’m not against the idea of having someone come and clean the house (we have such a service ourselves and it is great). However, it strikes me as being a bit inconsistent reading this entry compared to the previous entry re: May spending. It’s been really great progress the last several months, but as stated in the previous blog post, there are still challenges ahead to make sure that the tide has really turned on the debt. I’d imagine that the concern some may have would be that having a house cleaning service is a nicety that is usually not associated with folks that are deeply in debt (or maybe it is!). Even understanding that we all need to take the long view and reward ourselves for progress to keep motivated, it does strike me as being a little bit premature to reverse some hard-fought gains on the budget front.
Having said that, ultimately it is an experiment that is worth trying — if indeed the increased sanity and quality of life translates well than it is money well spent. If the service doesn’t yield the desired effect, it can always be stopped?
Thanks for pointing this out Joe. I think the spending I spoke about in the first weekend of May is directly related to feeling completely chaotic in my home. I don’t want to make any rash decisions so I am not out looking for a housekeeper already but what you write here drives home the point for me that my home is currently not where I need it to be to feel at peace and organized. When I am not organized the wheels on this bus start getting very shaky and the first weekend of May proves that point exactly. So the inconsistency of the two posts might actually make the best argument for a housekeeper!
Try flylady.net
I think anyone can justify having a housekeeper. However, after thinking about this post I spent about an hour last night watching tv and cleaning and did a pretty good job cleaning the family room. It felt great and didn’t cost me a thing.
Is the rest of my house pristine? No. But I’ll do a little more tonight.
We’re both $90k in debt (students loans – gah!) I want to get out of it a bit faster. We can do it!
I’ve been debating a cleaning service for awhile. Here are my drawbacks – I don’t want someone in my house while I’m not home. I’d also feel silly watching someone else clean. The one time deep cleans are often very expensive compared to the twice a month rates.
I’ve decided that I mostly hate spending my entire Saturday deep cleaning. Instead, I try to do most of my cleaning activities on Thursday evenings instead of Saturday. This gains me a clean house for the weekend. Deep cleaning activities are rotated between Thursdays.
Maybe think about the areas of the house that are really the most chaotic. If a messy living room makes you crazy, focus on deep cleaning that. No need to clean the baseboards in every room in the house – just the living room. One of my favorites is to clean the light fixtures. It always looks so much nicer with clean globes.
My once a month ” deep clean” is $95. If i had the cleaning service come twice a month it would be $75 per visit – $50 more than what i currently pay. Unless you have exPerience with this type of service, I don’t know where your information comes from. Heresay is not the same as personal experience.
An actual deep clean could be done once just to get you started – maybe once every six months? I hired my cleaning service to clean out our condo before I hired them for the monthly basis. The deep clean they did – walls and carpets and oven etc was $175. If I had not hired them for mo thly cleaning I would use that deep clean service twice a year.
Also, you can specify what you want help with you can say upstairs only or leave the kid’s bedrooms as they are etc. if you plan on using a professional service, they come bonded and insured for damages, accidents and lost or stolen items.
You have options in an array of price ranges and like I said in a previous post, there are Mormon churches offer a free cleaning service and you could thank them by giving them a donation to their church.
I’ve priced the service in my area – not heresay. It is for this reason that I won’t make the plunge. It costs $150 JUST to have my carpets cleaned – and I’m in a low cost of living area with less than 1000 square feet of carpet. As with everything, prices vary.
Have you ever heard of the Flylady? Flylady.net
She is a guru on keeping a organized clean house at your own pace. I started doing her program this year when I was so stressed about my house.
We lived in “CHAOS”- that is “Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome”! By doing her steps everyday my house is now very clean, organized and I never spend my whole Saturdays doing DEEP cleaning. It has helped my family so very much. Plus it’s free and you really can’t beat free! 🙂
Marv–I just did a post on flylady not too long ago. Love, love, love her. I revisited her site last night and introduced the kids to her. Baby steps…baby steps.
Wow, Americans are a spoiled bunch. Almost no one of my grandparents’ or parents’ generation would claim that a housekeeper is a need or that one should spend money on such luxuries when in debt! How did we get to the point that this many commentors can’t clean their own houses??!
Luxuries, including housekeepers, should not be in anyone’s budget while they owe other people money or while they don’t have all of their other financial bases covered (retirement savings, college savings, emergency fund, etc).
The “time is money” argument is a joke for most people. “Time is money” if you truly are so busy earning money that you’ll really earn more money with that time you spent. Most people don’t earn more money when they pay for services. They spend that extra time watching TV or doing something else that doesn’t relate to money.
“Time is money” would let most people justify anything they want to buy. And usually their time really isn’t that valuable and they aren’t off earning extra money with the time.
Funny timing Margot! I actually just got an offer for a money making opportunity that will take me about 2 hours a week…it would yield an extra $100 per week so I won’t be watching tv after all!
Margot-please don’t paint all Americans with such a broad brush. I’m also shocked at the number of commentors who consider a housecleaning service “normal” or “necessary”, but there are plenty of us who don’t mind dirtying our hands and cleaning up after ourselves!
I guess what’s really surprising is the support for this kind of expense in today’s economic climate. Sure, my husband and I could afford a housecleaning service, but aside from paying on necessities and a little for entertainment every month, we’re dumping every other cent into paying off our cars, house, and savings.
Who knows what the future holds?? It looks pretty grim these days though…
Wow, Claire, you just don’t get it, do you?
It’s great that you have a money-making opportunity, but that doesn’t mean you have “extra” money. You owe a crazy amount of money, have no financial security for yourself or your children, yet you feel justified in spending money you don’t have so you don’t have to clean,
This “extra” money is not yours – it belongs to those whom you owe. Imagine adding that $200, plus the hundred or so you will pay for a cleaning service, to your debt repayment. Run some financial scenarios and see how much more quickly your debt could be gone.
It becomes quite clear that you have not yet realized the dire straits you are in.
I guess it would actually be an extra $400 a week plus the cost of the cleaning service – put that toward your debt and watch how much faster it gets paid off.
Geesh – a month!
You could always put what you pay for cleaning supplies toward the cost of a house cleaner, right? Or would they use your materials?