How to Employ a HousekeeperFeb 22 '06 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line A housekeeper is well worth the small chunk out of your budget, but hiring and keeping the right one is all in your attitude.
Welcome to the Bourgeoisie So you would like to pay somebody to clean your house for you? Congratulations! Welcome to the top of the food chain. That was a joke. If you've never looked into getting a housekeeper you probably perceive it as a luxury, but it's more affordable than you might think. You also might think housekeepers are only for people who live in very big houses. If you can afford a very big house, I hope you can also afford a little help with the upkeep, but I feel that housekeepers are for anyone who can find room in their budget, especially if they are very busy or just don't clean very well. The first year my husband and I were married, we were quite poor. Since we both worked full time, committed our weekends to volunteer work, and I was in school, we were so busy we rarely saw our tiny apartment in the sunlight. That was just as well, because it was disgusting. We managed to divide up the tasks necessary to prevent filth-related diseases, like laundry and dishes, but avoided other chores like vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing bathroom surfaces. Because each of us could clearly see that the other was a red-eyed zombie running on caffeine fumes and tenacity, we didn't dare even discuss who should tackle those duties. When I bemoaned this situation to my mother, a successful store owner who never taught me how to clean a toilet or wash a window, she asked why we didn't just cancel our cable package and hire a cleaning lady. This is an odd suggestion to make to a young couple with an unimpressive combined income, but I was talking about dropping classes to be a better housewife, and this was a very distasteful suggestion to my mother who wanted me to finish school more than anything. She urged me to look into it, and said I would be surprised that hiring someone for such a small place would be much less expensive than I thought. This advice probably saved my marriage and my education during that first tough year. We canceled our bundled services from the cable company, which we didn't need because we had internet access at work and school, were usually only available by cell phone anyway, and had no time for television. The price of those dropped services was more than the cost of having a housekeeper clean our 700 square foot apartment each week. Forgive the cliche, but a good housekeeper is worth her weight in gold. A bad one can cause all kinds of headaches ranging from bleach-stains on your good towels to identity theft. Thoughtful hiring, followed by polite treatment, specific guidance, and smart security practices, is very important for enjoying this experience. I will call the housekeeper "she" throughout. Some housekeepers are men, but the only one I've ever heard of is David Sedaris, and I don't think he's available for cleaning jobs at this time. You are much more likely to find women seeking this position. She's Not Your Maid Please remove the word "maid" from your vocabulary. You're not a 19th century aristocrat; you don't have a butler, a valet, or a stableboy, and you don't have a maid either. This person who is coming to your home to clean deserves a lot of respect for the backbreaking work she does for you and others in the community. You can call her a housekeeper, a domestic professional, a cleaning technician, your Manager of Household Sanitizing Operations - whatever term you would consider respectful if your own mother or daughter were cleaning for a living. The title is not important, but your attitude is. Some cleaning services, such as the Maids Molly and Merry, use this term cheerfully. I consider this a symptom of these services' overall disrespect for the people in their employ. Maybe your housekeeper will call herself a maid and find nothing offensive about the term. That is her choice. Until you have hired such a person, calling somebody your maid fosters a master and servant subconscious point of view that will not serve you well in dealing with this employee. Give her at least the respect a half-star motel gives its staff, and think of her as the housekeeper. Don't Bother With the Yellow Pages Thumbing through the yellow pages or clicking on Google ads is not a good way to find a housekeeper. This is a person who will come to your home and touch all your personal things, most likely while you are busy at work. You don't "shop" for this kind of service the way you would for a locksmith or a plumber. This kind of search will turn up whatever big professional cleaning services are in your area. Hiring one of them is a huge mistake for so many reasons from social issues, to finances, to safety, to security, and to the shoddy methods they force their employees to use. A hypothetical generic cleaning service, let's call it Magic Maids, trains their cleaning crew to work extremely fast. They begin in one corner of the home and work in small sections, never backtracking, caddying all the necessary supplies at once. This allows them to fit as many homes as possible into a day, but it means no cleaning is done with hot or fresh water. Some people are happy with their Magic Maids service because they feel that a company has done the legwork for them by doing a background check and screening criminals, drug addicts, and undocumented immigrants out of their home. They are also happy because when the cleaning service has finished, the home looks and smells clean. I couldn't possibly go into the ethics (or lack thereof) these companies operate under in a little How To guide like this, but I can say that you shouldn't feel comforted by Magic Maids' statements about hiring. As for the home looking and smelling clean, that doesn't mean that it is clean. These services give their employees a standard solution made of water and alcahol, and they use it on everything from your cherry bookshelves, to your toilet, to your countertops. Another problem is that a different person could clean your house every time and then disappear, so she is not accountable to you. This means she has little to fear if she steals something, because she doesn't know you from Adam, has no way of getting referrals from you, and by the time you notice it's gone there may have been three or four different housekeepers in your home and there is no way to know which one was the culprit. I reccomend finding an independent housekeeper, preferably by referral. Not only will she charge less than a big company, but you will also be able to form a personal relationship with her that could last for years. If you hire somebody who works for several other people you know, she will be motivated to do a better job for all of you so that you won't say anything bad to each other. Obviously, if you suspect she is nicking quarters out of your change jar or wearing your underwear around the house while you are at work, you will dismiss her and tell all your friends why. This is disastrous for an independant housekeeper's business, so they tend to be much more thorough and trustworthy than those employed through a service. One exception are corporate janitorial and construction clean-up services. These people are trained to be fast, thorough, and get squeaky clean results. These hard workers often prefer to work at night. While you will not often find employees of these services who are willing to work in homes, I have seen some make excellent housekeepers. Pony Up! A housekeeper can charge a flat fee or an hourly rate, and the price will vary depending on how big your house, how many bathrooms, and anything special you would like her to do such as changing and washing bed linens. Sometimes you can negotiate details which will lower the price. If your house has more than one bathroom but only one gets a lot of use, you might ask her to only clean the unused bathrooms occasionally. If you don't mind doing your own vacuuming or dusting, ask her if you could get a discount for taking those chores off her list. You could also ask her to come every other week instead of every week, but some housekeepers don't like to do this since your house will be much dirtier after two weeks. For a large family home with three bathrooms and four bedrooms, it will be expensive to hire somebody for all that scrubbing, vacuuming, and dusting. Talk to several different housekeepers to make sure you know what the going rates are in your area. Somebody who is asking way too little should throw up a red flag. Many communities possess legendarily good housekeepers with a year long waiting list and a book of references that looks like a guest list for the local charity balls. Such a person can name her fee, and if you can afford it you will wonder how you survived on your own. But don't hire anybody you can't afford. You will be displeased with anybody's performance, no matter how impeccable, if they are eating a huge hole in your wallet. Give Her a Break If you are the type who considers themselves so busy that they should never have to explain anything more than once or consider people's feelings because they are paid to work, you are the type who will never be happy with their housekeeper. This service is extremely personal, and unless you hire a sought-after psychic, many discussions go into achieving your vision of a perfectly cleaned home. How patient and friendly you are about these discussions will affect the results almost as much as how specifically you frame your requests. Hopefully you covered your requirements and her Won't Do's before you hired your housekeeper. Many Won't Do windows, laundry, dishes, or pick up after you. If you throw a big, messy party or refinish your hardwood, it's unreasonable to expect her to clean up for her regular fee. Discuss these situations in advance. Do you think furniture polish ruins your antiques? Tell her so. Would you like her to use biodegradable or non-allergenic formulations in the bathroom? Speak up. Is the Persian rug on your floor a family heirloom which must be stroked softly along the nap with a hand-held vacuum attachment? Don't wait for her to aggressively Hoover it and enfuriate you to say something about that. If your children are rude to the housekeeper and you let them get away with it, congratulate yourself - it must be your goal to raise horrible people, and you are succeeding. Their behavior is understandable, since most kids go through a snotty phase and will want to test their limits with everybody. It's only natural to want to see how far they can go with the housekeeper. This is yet another reason why you shouldn't treat the housekeeper like she's your vassal slave or brag to your friends about the hired help. If paying this person is a status symbol for you, your children will pick up on that and view her as their possession. Teach them that she is a professional worthy of the same respect they show their teachers or any of your friends who come to visit. If your housekeeper complains of rude treatment from your children, give her a break and do something about it. Don't defend their bad behavior or accuse her of making it up. Even great kids do mean things, and living in denial will only rob them of your guidance. Some housekeepers don't speak English well. This doesn't mean she is less intelligent than you are or not a legal resident, but she may be new to the country. Some women who clean houses in our country had college degrees and successful businesses where they came from, and the hardships or ambitions that brought them here are worthy of our admiration. I have discovered that many people speak more English than they first let on once you show them some kindness and patience. Communication is very important, so finding somebody who can translate between you is necessary for important details, like negotiating pay or explaining the care of your valuables. Another way to give the housekeeper a break is to stay out of her way while she cleans. Unless you have a very busy work-at-home business or just desperately hate cleaning and have money to burn, she probably cleans the house while you are at work anyway. If you are around while she is working, don't hover. How does it make you feel when your boss hovers over your shoulder while you work? Try to bite your tongue if she doesn't do things the way your mom taught you - comments such as "Paper towels? Don't you think newspaper is best for windows?" are exasperating and not helpful. Showing your housekeeper some TLC will get the best possible performance from her. Throw in a nice tip for Christmas, and you just might come home to find your dishes washed and every knick knack in perfect tableux. Be Careful, But Not Paranoid For a long time after you hire her, your housekeeper will still be a stranger. It's not smart to leave strangers alone in your house with access to your cash or jewelry. Lock up your valuable things whenever anyone you've hired will be alone in your house. It's also not smart to leave your children alone with somebody you don't know. Arrange for appropriate childcare while the housekeeper is working if you can't be home. Some people use nannycams for security. These are pretty inexpensive, and I suppose most people who work in homes are used to the possibility of surveillance. Personally, I don't like the idea. It's tempting to watch the footage, and anything you find of interest is likely to be more embarassing than incriminating. Do you really want to "catch" your housekeeper scratching her armpits or mumbling to herself about how stupid your wedding pictures look? If you do use them, I think it's only fair to let her know that you have them hidden around the house but will only watch them if you suspect her of something serious, and then hold yourself to that promise. Of couse you want to make sure they are insured, bonded, legal citizens, and learn what kind of tax-time implications this hire will have for you, but it's most important to make sure you've found a quality person who is a good fit for your home. If it's a Bad Match If you have made every effort to train your housekeeper but she is still not doing what you require, it's time to let her go. Employing a bad housekeeper is much worse than doing your own housework. Somebody who goes over the line with your possessions should probably be let go right away, especially if you have already explained what they are allowed to use; for example, local phone calls, keeping food in the fridge, and having Oprah keep them company while they mop all seem reasonable to me, but using my computer or eating my leftovers cross my boundaries. It goes without saying that anybody who behaves inappropriately in front of your children or flirts with your spouse will not work out. Hire Away! You work hard for your money. There's nothing like coming home to a sparkling, fresh-scented home, especially when somebody else did all the work without four hours of nagging and thirty-seven reminders from you. Employing a housekeeper is a joy worth every dollar if you take the time to find the right person, treat them with respect, and teach them exactly what you need to be happy. As my father used to say, "The housekeeper is expensive, but she's a lot cheaper than a divorce."  |
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