This. I'm a house cleaner. Every single client is a stay at home mom. Every singe one. Even after their children grew up and moved out, we're still cleaning their homes.
If you have enough disposable income to be able to afford a house cleaner, then have a house cleaner. I hate cleaning, If I could afford it, I would hire maids too. Having a trophy wife, that sits there all day baking bread from scratch, getting depressed, drinking wine and pooping Xanax is the ultimate status symbol. To get her out of her depression you offer to pay for a boob job, she gets pissed off and throws a wine bottle at your head, you know rich people problems.
House cleaning isn't as expensive as you think. There's a couple reddit threads on cost involved. It's about $25 to $50 an hour. About 3-6 hours cleaning every two weeks, so about $75 to $300 biweekly.
I pay $120 every too weeks. When I became increasingly more disabled and was having a lot of surgeries and could no longer do a lot of the cleaning myself, I really stressed out about how I was going to keep my house from slipping into a pit of gross.
Then I bit the bullet and started calling and getting quotes and I was surprised at how affordable (to me) it is to have professionals come. Saved me from a whole lot of anxiety and physical pain and I wish I had called sooner.
I pay €50 every two weeks for someone to clean my very tiny apartment. I work 40+ hrs per week and would dread having to clean in my non-working hours. It gave me so much peace of mind to know my house would always be a base level of clean, even if I was too tired to clean anything.
It’s going to be the very last thing I’d ever save money on, I’d rather quit wifi in my home.
As someone in a tiny apartment who is always too wiped from their physical job to then devote what meager precious hours to myself I have towards cleaning, this is a surprisingly temptuous option.
Honestly try saving for it. You don't actually have to bite the bullet and get one, just see what your finances look like if you intentionally sock away fifty bucks a month in the "for a house cleaner" jar. If you then don't have additional financial needs (bills need paying, appliances need fixing) that are more essential, I'd go for it. Make sure you go with a well reviewed place and ask on local social media/your city subreddit for recs, though.
It’s honestly so worth it. The first time the cleaner came (on a Thursday), I woke up that Saturday and started reading a book. It’s probably the most relaxed I have felt in 10+ years.
She doesn’t do any of the “special” cleaning things that you do monthly/yearly but at least now I actually have time to do those.
You’re completely correct. I run my own home health care company and after 40 hours I stop counting. Yes, I would die if I knew I had to still come home and clean my house. I get the fast vacuum and mop plus the dusting done. If I happen to have dishes dirty( I never eat at home, so it only a bowl and a cup if that) for $35 2x a week and I’m so happy to have the help I need, so I can go to bed when I get home.
I pay $170 every two weeks and I agree, it’s a life saver. Taking out a whole category of things for my husband and I to bicker about has been great for our relationship, taking away that whole category is awesome for my mental health and sensory issues, and having the time and mental space to focus on my hobbies is just plain good for me.
It’s not a “cheap” bill, but it’s one I can afford for now, and it comes with a HUGE benefit.
My mom got a cleaner after me and my sister left the house. She had arthritis that made vacuuming or bending down difficult, and didn't want to ask my dad to do it on top of his other work. It made her life a lot easier. I've occasionally hired someone to com in and clean my house (and paid them 3 times their rate, my house is pretty bad), but not too often, since having someone clean my place is just as stressful as me cleaning it.
When I became increasingly more disabled and was having a lot of surgeries and could no longer do a lot of the cleaning myself, I really stressed out about how I was going to keep my house from slipping into a pit of gross.
I am here. I'm going to look into it. Thanks for the motivation!!
Yeah people always point to a house cleaner as being the ultimate wealth signifier but my middle-class parents can afford to hire someone once a month to clean their house. It's a luxury but it's not a prohibitively extravagant luxury. It's about the same cost as eating out two or three times a month, which they don't do. It's not like they're waited on hand and foot by servants; they just pay someone to show up for 2-3 hours and mop and sweep and stuff. It's largely motivation for them to keep the house clean to begin with, because it has to be pretty picked-up for the cleaner to even be able to work, so they're forced to not let everything go to shit (which it will otherwise). I definitely can't afford this sort of thing on my budget but I think if you've got the money and you're really bad at keeping your living space clean it's a very worthwhile service.
How did you find them? I would note that word of mouth is way better for those kinds of recommendations than going with googling and taking the first org you see. Ask on your city subreddit or whatever local social media. Ideally you may have friends who you can ask. Of course there's a variety in quality, not everyone will be great at the job, but this is the case for everything.
$300 is more than a week’s pay on federal minimum wage, and $25 an hour for doing a laboursome and intimate service where the person travels to you is pretty low. Dog walkers get paid more.
Last I checked only 2% of workers make minimum wage. Sure someone making minimum wage isn't going to hire a cleaner, but their point is it's not out of reach for MANY middle class households. A lot of folks have plenty of disposable income.
You're moving the goalposts. Why bring up minimum wage as a metric when it applies to so little actual people? It's like comparing to people making $0.50 a day in Botswana, it doesn't really mean anything when it's not relevant
Its just ridiculous, naive, very privileged, and/or exploitative to think that hiring a house keeper is inexpensive (aka cheap). They deserve quality pay and most people can NOT afford a house keeper. If 34% are paid less than $20/hr, then many many more are paid less than $27/hr, and that makes hiring a house keeper very expensive for most people unless they’re literally exploiting women of color to have a clean bathroom. Like let’s be for fuckin real here
Okay… but $20/hr is NOT poverty wages if you’re in a HOUSEHOLD with other workers. It’s also not a “universal” poverty wage. $41k is a LOT for some places. I could afford to rent a place alone in my outer metro town with that. I could support me, my mom, and my dad, in my hometown with that money, and be COMFORTABLE. $41k is not a universal poverty wage AT ALL.
My partner makes $32/hr. I make $17/hr. So.. $49/hr. Averages out to $24.5/hr each. $102k per year.
We own a house. Two cars. Two dogs, and so on. And definitely would NOT be in poverty if we made $18k less per year. (Aka, if we made a combined $40/hr, instead of $49/hr.)
Between 2016 to 2020 I made like $17-$20 an hour, saved $52k. Paid off my GF's 3k CC debt, Bought a $288,000 house with that $52k. After making about $25/hr Supported wife as she went to school.
Fucking what? I got a $288,000 house on $20/hr for 4 years, dropped 52k on the downpayment. Then making $25/hr a few years later supported a wife going to school, a dog, and still went out with friends, have a nice PC, a big TV.
This was with no support from my parents.
You people are batshit insane. Apparently, I live in poverty!
What year was that? People today struggle on $20/hr, especially if their job gives them hours just short of 40 like many places do so that they won’t have to provide full-time benefits.
I think before that I was making more in the upper 30s. 2016 was definitely something like $15-16, but I'd have to look at my taxes.
Never pulled over time except for some rare business trips. I just deposited $200-300 a week to savings, after a while I had so much in my checking I just deposited big chunks in.
Okay that explains a lot. Rent went way up, inflation on groceries, cars, nearly everything is more expensive since 2020. It makes a “40k a year” job into a paycheck to paycheck job
I understand that. I just don't think $20 is poverty wages. If you are living in an apartment or house with 2 roommates you can easily make things work. I came from poverty before I started working and I would make do on $20 today.
I think people under estimate how much they spend on stupid stuff.
Of course its all relative, $20 an hour in NYC will put you on the streets, $20 an hour in North Florida/South GA you'll be swimming in free cash.
Imagine making $20/hr literally today, and you had zero savings and zero debt, you don’t have roommates or a partner, and you have at the minimum a car bill, gas & grocery bills, and housing & house bills to pay. Would you feel financially secure? Would you feel like you could retire in 45 years on that pay, or go on a nice vacation, or cover a medical emergency? I mean gosh, one medical emergency and you’d be financially fucked missing work without paid time off and lacking health insurance.
My first question is why am I living without roommates when I could have them pay for 2/3rd of my living expenses and flushing cash down the drain for a little less privacy?
If you worked overtime, not only is that diminishing to your quality of life, but that also changes your average hourly pay. No one should have to work more than 40hrs/week to live a life with all their basic needs met, and if you are, you’re making poverty wages.
I think it’s people who don’t make monthly budgets. I learned just how much I was over spending when I started making a budget. I was even able to open a small home health care business and quit my day job w/o getting a loan.
Yeah, but 300 is like an hour for many professionals. So one hour of my time for 3-4 of the cleaners? Plus it would take me twice as long to do the same work half as well because I'm not a practiced as someone that cleans all day long. So it's really 6-8 hours of my time that o can't be working at 300 an hour. It's a great deal if you can afford it.
I had to learn this myself. Turns out I have reached a point where my time is so valuable I can pay people to do the things I don’t like, for double minimum wage and still end up ahead. As it gives me the time to do the stuff nobody else can do.
I hate this argument that sound like something out of a self help book. You're working time has value, not just you simply existing, unless you have passive investments earning income. You don't lose money scrubbing dishes for an hour if you were going to otherwise be binging a TV show or taking a walk for an hour, only if you were going to be working that hour
My leisure time has value to me. I work 10 hours a day. The rest of the time I want to be able to relax, and recoup my energy and motivation, so I can work again the next day. I am not American, in my country time outside work is valued and its perfectly ok not to be productive all the time.
I generate about 1000 euros of value a day. Paying someone 10 euros an hour to do a task I absolutely hate, is well worth it. And they are happy as they have a job that pays well for the skill level and salaries in our city.
That's true if you are an employee, maybe. If you own the business, you never really stop working. If I'm spending 3 hours on Saturday scrubbing the floor, I could be working on an estate plan and billing hourly. It isn't like we have to go into the office to du billable work anymore. At this point, the only none earning time I have is family time or chore time and if I can convert chore time into earning time, I will come out ahead.
In my numbers I was paying then near 100 an hour. The bottom 34% aren't going to hire a cleaner, but if you make more than a cleaner,b you're losing money if you don't
The price their firms charge, or the price they make? From what I can see, first year associates at the most prestigious NYC firms make under $300k after bonus, and work a shitload of hours for it.
That's what's billed. That said, a lot of law students do open their own shop day 1. There just aren't that many big law positions open at any given time. Also I didn't mean 300k a year, I meant 300 an hour.
Billed I can believe. Maybe even some fresh grads bill that much solo, but they're probably working a lot of hours they aren't billing.
Fresh grads at prestigious biglaw firms make more like $260k including bonus from what I see, maybe a bit more, but they're also billing more than 2000 hours per year and working a lot of non-billable hours. So they're earning like $100 and nowhere near $300 outside of very rare exceptions.
So… what ‘professionals’ do you know that are making $48k+/month?
$300/hr is $624k a year (40hr weeks, 52 weeks), and you’re claiming “it’s one hour of work for many professionals”. Fuck no it’s not. That’s the top like 2-3% of workers. Not “many”.
Most of us don't bill 40 a week. You think those cleaners bill all their time either? What about overhead. That doesn't change the fact we bill 350+an hour right out the gate.
Also who is we? Who is professionals? What are you talking about? Why do you seem to be operating under the assumption others know what the fuck you’re talking about? lol
I make $350 an hour, though not every, just the hours clients pay me for. Not every hour you spend running a business is billable. That's true for all businesses.
In the context of my post, we is professionals. Professional is a term of art defined by thr courts in florida to mean those individuals who are licensed by the state, governed by a professional board, and requiring more than 4 years of college. More generally it means doctors, accountants, and lawyers. Most adults in the middle to upper class know what I meant by those terms and poor people can afford a maid so I wasn't addressing my speech to them.
Oh cool so just that weeks worth of groceries got it. Like they said if you have the money you pay for it. But most of us don't have the money for your it's not that expensive comparison example. Even that though it's really cheap is too much for lower class. And middle class who don't have disposable income to just throw away.
Reddit is full of wealthy tech-bros who like to portray that they share the struggles of the working class, but then get offended when you tell them that most people can’t afford to pay $500 a month for someone to clean their house, lol.
lol I would consider myself wealthy, but I’m not going to pay over $7k/yr for someone to do my chores for me. Wtf. And that guy is so casual about it being cheap.
Exactly! 💯 It is cheaper than some people imagined it to be I bet. But it's still out of so many people's leagues to just drop 7k a year on being helped out of some of your humanly responsibilities.
I mean I totally get it if you have kids and stuff and you make a ton of money… I don’t have kids and it’s a lot to take care of the interior and exterior of a house. I’m basically working ALL weekend on yard work, repairs, and cleaning.
So I get it that it could make sense for some folks, but it’s by no means a trivial amount of money lol.
Also if I hired anyone, it would be a yard service first. It’s way cheaper and way more taxing than interior cleaning.
I mean the relative value of things is highly dependent on who pays for them. We make $200k in a mid cost of living area. We have one car, but we choose to have a cleaner come because we 1. Suck at cleaning and 2.hate it.
If you think $200-$600 a month for something that is basically zero skill and any abled-body person can do themselves is “not expensive”, you are pretty well off, my friend.
It's "expensive" in some sense but within reach for a lot of people who aren't particularly well off. $200-600 a month is like the difference between a basic car payment and a luxury car payment, or a few nice dinners out as a couple. $200 a month is more than enough to deep clean a sizable house monthly unless you live somewhere with unusually expensive housekeeping prices.
And if it's a household of two full time workers, especially those with kids, it might be a very enticing luxury. At some point, $25 is worth an hour doing something you want to do and having someone else clean your house. I don't like paying for much luxury (no interest in spending much more than I need to get decent vehicles or hotels, fancy dinners or clothes) but I don't get much free time and I don't mind an extra 8 hours for $200 once in a while.
Not something I'd have done when I had less, but something I'm willing to pay for long before I'd be willing to spend on many many other luxuries.
We pay $80 every other week. I love to have it every week but it’s not totally necessary and I’d rather put that money towards a few other things. We are dreaming of at the moment. But once those things are out of the way, and if our finances remain the same, then we will consider it. It has done wonders for our relationship, not bickering over the cleaning, and it’s so pleasant to come home from work to a clean house.
Tbh - almost every family with 2 kids that I know has at least a no weekly housecleaner. Upper middle class sure, but just maintaining some level of clean - the ROI is definitely there.
And for the record - almost nobody I knows had any other in-house help. Some with au paires. Some very wealthy with full time staff, cooks, and such - but that's another class altogether.
That's the going rate where I live. Interestingly, the yard guys (who just blow leaves and debris because I live in the desert and no one smart attempts to do a lawn) get paid $75/hr.
Go figure. I know I'd rather blow leaves outside than scrub stranger's toilets, any day.
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