Happy Independence Day! Today, my household celebrated our new-found independence…from maid services! Actually, it was a very educational day for me. I learned just how much stuff I had been paying a maid service NOT to do for me every two weeks. Wait, let’s back up a minute.
We started using maid services years ago, long before we had a child. When we were childless and carefree, my husband and I spent a lot of hours working. When we weren’t working, we preferred to spend our free time traveling (mostly to Vegas), playing video games, and generally indulging our shallow, immature, hedonistic desires. SO SUE ME. Those were the salad days, and we could easily afford our maids. And the maid service we had was terrific. They did an amazing job, and “maid day” (every two weeks) quickly became something we looked forward to. First, it forced us to straighten up the night before, but second, I loved coming home and smelling how clean the house smelled, and seeing all the vacuum tracks in the carpet. And, let’s be honest, I did NOT miss cleaning bathrooms, or the inside of the microwave, or any of that stuff.
Eventually, we had to cancel our service. They kept raising the price (though they were, admittedly, worth every penny) and the hubz went through a few months of unemployment, so it seemed prudent to cut back on discretionary expenses like maid service. By this time, we had our daughter, and I really missed those maid visits. We managed to keep the house pretty clean, but it was a little bit of a drag.
Eventually, we decided to start using maids again. Since the last company we were using had gotten pretty expensive, we decided to use a different company. We had an estimate, an initial cleaning, and then they started coming every other week.
(A brief note on why I’m not identifying the actual companies we used. They were both large, national chains. While one was terrific, and one turned out to be awful, these companies are franchises, so each office is independently-owned. I realize that just because we have a terrible outlet of company B in our area, there are probably perfectly good outlets in others. And just because we had a good experience with the local office of company A, that doesn’t mean that they don’t suck elsewhere. So, no names will be used. Though, again, these were very large, national maid companies, whose names you can probably guess without too much trouble.)
At first, I was pretty happy with our new maid service, but a few months into the relationship, things changed. First they started getting kind of erratic, and more than once they didn’t show up on the scheduled day and we had to re-schedule. Then, I started noticing that some jobs weren’t really done all that well – the bathroom mirrors were always streaky, for example. And then there was the day they sprayed a bleach-based mildew remover all over our hall bathroom (where there is no mildew problem to speak of), causing not only an unholy stench of bleach, but covering two dark green throw rugs with large, orange, bleached-out polka dots. I called that day and I was really mad. REALLY mad. The company offered to reimburse me for the cost of new rugs (something which they never actually did, by the way, even though I faxed them a receipt), and also admitted that the same cleaners had generated complaints in other houses, including one where they had ruined not just a throw rug, but the actual carpet. So that didn’t make me feel very good at all.
It was all downhill from there. Last week, I finally talked to my hubz about canceling the service and just doing it ourselves for a while, and he agreed. We figured a.) it gives us a good workout every weekend, b.) we can definitely do a better job than the most recent company was doing, and c.) aside from a small investment in cleaning products, we’ll be saving a good deal of money.
Today was Cleaning Day 1. What an eye-opener! I knew the maids were doing a half-assed job, but I guess I never realized just how half-assed. I quickly learned. Keeping in mind that they were just here last Tuesday, the things we observed today included:
- Layers of gunk around various faucets that would take much longer than five days to accumulate.
- Areas behind doors (laundry room, bathroom, closets) where the floors had obviously never been thoroughly cleaned.
- Completely filthy baseboards (even though their notes indicated that they had cleaned the baseboards at least bi-monthly).
- Thick layers of dust on various surfaces, belying their claims that they dusted on every visit.
And it just goes on and on. Let’s not even talk about the toilets. Let’s not even talk about the dirt hubz found under various objects that had never been moved for cleaning. Was this our own fault? Certainly. I guess I should have been going over everything with a fine-toothed comb after every visit, and then calling to complain about each failing. It’s just, that was never necessary with the previous maid company. They just did an outstanding job, the kind of job I think someone I’m paying to clean my house should do.
Well, live and learn. For now, we’re cleaning junkies, and I have to admit – the workout I got today cleaning three bathrooms was terrific, and also left me with a feeling of accomplishment AND relaxation that can only be achieved through vigorous and thorough cleaning.
