anyone hire a housecleaner and gardener?

[vash]

pondering this. i find myself scheduling my weekend work, months in advance. i love my hobbies, and i dont watch much TV or movies, no time. this would open up alot of time. but i think i am too cheap (or would feel guilty, spending $$), plus i love buying lawn tools. any experiences? housecleaner, clean out the jewelry box?

[cowtown]

We have a housekeeper come in twice a month and love it. Not to straighten up clothes or anything, just to clean showers/toilets/tile floors/blinds, etc. It's the best two hundred bucks a month you can spend.

I think the only way to find someone you can trust is word of mouth.

[gaijindabe]

Please pay them a living wage with full benifits and SSI contribution. Thanks.

[cowtown]

Originally posted by gaijindabe
Please pay them a living wage with full benifits and SSI contribution. Thanks.

?

Fifty dollars an hour comes out to...hmmm. I should get into the housekeeping business.

[pbs911]

If I could find a housecleaner that looked like the one in Spanglish, I'd hire her.

[vash]

hahaha, paul! she actually got better looking as the film went on. i wonder if she mows lawns?

[legion]

Originally posted by gaijindabe
Please pay them a living wage with full benifits and SSI contribution. Thanks.

Any housekeeping I could afford would be a housekeeping service, not a live-in housekeeper. That's what I assumed we're talking about here. As such, they set the rates. You have a contract with a service, and they pay the housekeepers. A person using the service doesn't have control over benefits or wages.

[tabs]

When in CA I had a Gardner at $85 a month for Full service...which was DIRT cheap ....U have to understand NO Gardner is going to do it 100% and I found I had to put in about 4 to 8 hours a month....which was just about right for me....the Gardner took away the RESPONSIBILITY of having to cut the lawn every week...whew...it gets old after 5 years...

I also had a Cleaning Lady every 2 weeks which was $170 a month....again they kept the surface clean...but moving furniture wasn't in their vocabulary....one cleaning lady I had did move furniture....

Now in LV I havn't had those expenses....which has saved me about 6K in 2 years....the yard work really amounted to very little work per month and the house cleaning well thats better left undescribed....the DUST in LV is TERRIBLE.....it's FINER than Flour grey stuff.. and every 2 days you gotta dust....

[id10t]

Have someone come in 2 or 3 times a year to do a bang-up job on the yard (pre parties usually) and someone else comes every 3 to 4 weeks to help the wife (she's stay at home mom) with the BIG cleaning jobs that no one has time/desire to do alone - scrub base boards, etc.

And no I can't really afford it financially, but the thereapeautic value for the wife is incredible.

[techweenie]

Housecleaner & gardener: $80/100 a month for both (!) Labor is cheap here in the poorer neighborhoods of So Cal.

[JavaBrewer]

Gardner @ $60/month comes every Friday to cut, edge, and cleanup. He also checks/adjusts the sprinklers and fertilizes the grass. Our lawn always looks really good - money well spent for us.

Wife and I still probably spend 2-3 hours every weekend cleaning, watering, weeding, planting, etc... but we enjoy it.

House cleaning - no need. My wife is a stay home Mom and I'm sorta O.C. so our house is always clean.

[cantdrv55]

Originally posted by techweenie
Housecleaner & gardener: $80/100 a month for both (!) Labor is cheap here in the poorer neighborhoods of So Cal.

Wow, that is cheap. My gardener charges $85 mo for weed/mow and blow the front and back yards. Plus, he'll cut the ivy down every once in a while. Don't have a housekeeper...yet. I'm a little paranoid about getting ripped off, identity theft, etc.

[gaijindabe]

The point I am trying to make fellows, is that if you are not paying them a "living wage" with healthcare and all the perks - well them someone else is making up the difference.

If they are living 30 to a house, someone else is paying most of their propery tax..
If they dont have health care, who is paying for the clinic / emergency room?

Etc, etc, etc.

If you can pay the freight for hired help, go for it. Just don't ask me to split the cost with you.

[campbellcj]

We've had housekeeping help for 10 years, starting at 2 days a month and 'escalating' to a live-in now that we have a 4 year old boy constantly tearing up the place. Best decision we ever made, as free time is too precious to spend scrubbing toilets or doing laundry.

Currently thinking about a new gardener as ours is $110/mo and pretty much a "mow, blow, and go" operation. We only have a 1/4 acre but it is heavily landscaped and stuff grows like crazy here with all the sunshine.

[techweenie]

Originally posted by gaijindabe
The point I am trying to make fellows, is that if you are not paying them a "living wage" with healthcare and all the perks - well them someone else is making up the difference.

If they are living 30 to a house, someone else is paying most of their propery tax..
If they dont have health care, who is paying for the clinic / emergency room?

Etc, etc, etc.

If you can pay the freight for hired help, go for it. Just don't ask me to split the cost with you.

Fair enough. The gardeners come from a service and mow/blow/go. As someone else posted, I have no control over what the workers are paid. I hope they aren't just day workers, but around here, they do live 4-5 to a bedroom and manage still to send half their income to their home country.

My housecleaner used to work for minimum wage for an agency, and several of us hired her directly so she could net $10/hr instead of $5. Not to be prejudiced here, but my experience with Mexicans, Salvadorans, etc. in L.A. is that as a group, they are the most honest people you're likely to encounter. So ID theft really isn't a consideration, IMHO.

[JavaBrewer]

Originally posted by techweenie
My housecleaner used to work for minimum wage for an agency, and several of us hired her directly so she could net $10/hr instead of $5. Not to be prejudiced here, but my experience with Mexicans, Salvadorans, etc. in L.A. is that as a group, they are the most honest people you're likely to encounter. So ID theft really isn't a consideration, IMHO.

Beyond ethnic boundries - laborers need to be treated as humans. Do that and they will invariably be square with you. I'm amazed at the poor treatment some these folks endure. I've sat in the backyard with guys installing our paver stone hardscape and shared lunch with them. Great people, great stories.

[techweenie]

Agreed, David. In the 80s, there was a rash of contractors picking up day laborers and leaving them, unpaid, to walk home from the job site. when I lived in Malibu, the laborers out there had been on the bus for 2-1/2 hours to get to the work, and faced another 2-1/2 hour ride home after their day.

Years ago, one of the guys I hired to build a block wall was from El Salvador and had been a high school French teacher...

[vash]

i have outworked every day labor that i have hired. not that they dont work hard, i get freaky and dont want to exploit them. i quit hiring them.

i would go with a service with both inside and outside of my home. just trying to figure out, if my control freak side will let me.

[mikester]

We hire a service for the house cleaning but I do the lawn work. It's not a large lawn though so to mow and blow it takes me about an hour and half a week. We've started doing some flowers though so now my maintenance is a little more. I enjoy it though because I like lawn tools of course.

The house thing is different - we have a new born and both work full time. We have them come every two weeks and they do a fine enough job. It isn't perfect but it keeps the surfaces clean and man do they do a fine job on the porcelain (which is where it shows).

We've had long discussions about the lawn - I like it too much to give up.

[djmcmath]

I recently hired a housecleaner, per se. She comes in twice a week and puts in a couple of hours to keep stuff reasonably organized, and only charges $8 an hour. My clothes are clean and folded, my dishes are done, and my toilet is clean, and I'm only out like $30 a week. Best $120 a month I've ever spent. I trust her because I knew her before she was my cleaner.