how much should you pay your cleaning person?

[ez]

I pay mine 60 bucks, but yesterday she only stayed 3 hours, so shes making 20 bucks an hour, that seems high to me. She doesn't do anything in the laundry room,I mean, I don't expect her to do laundry, but she doesn't even clean or mop in there. There is certainly a good 4- 5 hours worth of work if she would stay longer. She does a decent job in the rooms she works on, but she speaks broken English and is a little hard to communicate with. I've had this problem with cleaning people before....you pay them a set price, they rush to get done, and then you walk around looking at the stuff they could've been working on if they had stayed longer. I guess I need to find someone I pay by the hour, it is just hard to find people that don't do a half-assed job. How much do you all pay your cleaning people...should I be satisfied with who I have?

 

[floridafam]

Paying by the hour might not be the answer. Certain people will just take longer to get more pay.

Tell her exactly what you want done and that you will pay her accordingly.

You have every right to tell her exactly what she is to do for the pay she is receiving.

$20 an hour does sound high but I guess it depends on where you live.

 

[ohanafamily]

Hmm, Tough question, we pay ours $75, but we have a big house. DW likes her to "Clean and not Straighten". We had a maid I paid $60. who spent most of the day there. She spoke very little English, broke things and hid them. DW (before we were married) tried to get her to clean...Well, I made her fire the maid (I had had her for several years). I found a girl from the Czek Republic who was brought up cleaning houses, and she takes pride in her work. She only speaks 12 languages fluently. I can tell you, even though she spends 3-4 hours at my house She is worth it, and a lot more. You cannot teach someone who doesn't want to put forth the effort to clean to always do a proper job.

JMHO

 

[Pinnie]

Mine gets $65 and she and her DH (both lost their jobs in the Michigan econonmy and are staring a cleaning business). They do 3 bathrooms, dust, vacuum, wash the floors and that is about it. It takes them about 2.5 hours to get it done.

She sometimes goes the extra mile and cleans off the fan blades, etc. and I will slip in an extra $5 in the next weeks pay envelope.

pin

 

[wdwnutze]

I occassionally clean houses with a friend of mine that has her own business. We charge $25/hr. I do all floors(mop and vacuum), wipe down all baseboards, clean bathrooms, dust and wipe down all kitchen surfaces. I always ask the homeowner exactly what they want done. My girlfriend charges extra when she cleans sliding glass doors($25 for the door) and she will strip and wax a kitchen floor for $250. She has no trouble finding people that are willing to pay her.

 

[TiggersPal]

I pay my two gals $50 bucks, but they pretty much do everything. NO laundry, but they'll clean fan blades, wipe off the light bulbs in my bathroom (vanity) and what ever I can think of in addition to the floors, countertops, bookcases, polishing wood furniture etc.

They are usually here 2 plus hours - and even though I love not having to clean it seems RIDICULOUS to pay someone $20 bucks an hour for cleaning. There are people with computer skills, corporate political skills and communication skills, etc that don't make that type of money! However, we who value our free time because we work so hard, end up paying them most of them are illegals too. It's a catch 22 - for me. I want more free time with friends and family so I pay them to clean.

Not sure if everyone else feels that way, but it does seem crazy doesn't it? Oh well, such is life. Priorities I guess...eh?

 

[scrappinMickey]

I pay mine $65.00 and she does the dusting, floors, bathrooms, counter tops, etc...... She also strips the beds and changes the sheets. She does a couple loads of laundry (towels and sheets)

It is so worth it to me!! But sometimes she will hurry thru and get down early and leave. And my dh thinks if we are paying her that much a week she could do a little more!??

 

[mcnuss]

We pay $75 every other week. She is here about 3-4 hours - she vacuums and dusts a living room, family room, & 2 br. She cleans 3 bathrooms and a very large eat-in kitchen -- toilets, vanities, mirrors, counters, stove, outside of all appliances, floors, etc. She will do anything I ask but if it will take her a lot of time, we'll either barter (like, pls. clean the fronts of all my cabinets instead of dusting today) or I pay her more. Before and after the holidays she does an extra super good job for me, so the last 2 years, I've given her a bonus of an extra week's pay.

I've gotten over thinking about the hourly wage and I focus on the end result! I don't have to clean toilets!!!

 

[DStar4cup]

$20.00 an hour is not to much. I have my own cleaning business and I average $30.00 an hour. The question you have to ask yourself is would you clean someone elses toilets for any less?

 

[zurgswife]

I also clean for a houses and a few business for a living and at the homes I make AT LEAST $20 per hour. I charge by the hour...I'm also very flexible with my clients I will do some of the stuff that others charge extra for if they ask....windows, microwaves, laundry...I have great clients so I don't mind...


For my business clients I make between $20 ant $30 per hour....

I'm sure it depends on where you live. But in my area most of the full times house cleaners I know make $20 per hour...we are suburbs of Philly...

 

[clh2]

Be very clear about your expectations. We have had a cleaning lady for years...we very specifically excluded 3 rooms, (extra bedroom, laundry room, and the computer) from what we wanted to be cleaned. Our cleaning lady handles the 3 bathrooms, the kitchen, the dusting in the house, vacuuming etc. We have french doors in the house, and she cleans them, she also does the inside of the patio doors. On a rotating basis, she cleans the woodwork in the rooms.

I could care less how long it takes her to get done. She does get the job done. She charges $50 every other week, our house is 2550 square feet. (Rooms she doesn't do probably amount to 300sq feet.)

She is now having some medical difficulties, so we have been handling this on our own since October. WE REALLY MISS HER! It is just hard to keep up on our own. The house is never all clean at once.

So yes, I definitely feel it is worth $20 /hour or more to clean bathrooms, the kitchen floor and vacuuming etc.

 

[Mskanga]

My friend and I clean two houses once a week and we are very lucky, they are weekend homes and the people are very flexible and nice.
They both pay a flat fee and all we do is dust , vacuum , scrub the bathrooms and kitchen. We don't do windows because they have a grounds caretaker and he does that. We also mop the floors.
One house pays $50 and it takes us about 1.5 hours. The other pays $100 ( that's a 4 story home ) and it takes us about 2 hours, but to these people , having someone they can trust is the most important thing. We always get a Christmas bonus too.

 

[DocRafiki]

That's it. I'm quitting my job.

 

[DMickey28]

Seriously Doc, I am thinking the same thing. I don't have a job right now and am looking for what I want to do... I am sitting her with the calculator adding up what I can make doing that!!!

 

[Tigger1]

I make less as a teacher, plus I pay taxes out. I am in the wrong occupation.

Tigger

 

[Micca]

We're paying $15 an hour and only have her for a couple of hours per week. While DD was home on winter break, she told me the girl was only here for 50 minutes. I'm going to have to talk to her about either paying less, or having her do more work to fill the time.

 

[lulubelle]

We pay $60 and she is here about 2.5 hours. She works very hard and very fast. I feel very lucky and fortunate to have her. She does everything except things like laundry, inside the frigde and windows. One thing I hate to do that I wish I could pay extra for is the baseboards all around the house. They build up a dust that needs to be rubbed off every few months. Oh well, it probably does me good to get down on the floor and do it! I hired a cleaning lady 15 years ago and that along with my bi-weekly nail/pedicure appointments are two things I treat myself to. I work very hard myself and deserve to have these pleasures. I guess I would pay whatever it costs as long as I can afford it. And the poster who said trust is a big issue is correct. You pay for that as well, I mean this person is in our house alone with all our valuables and we have piece of mind knowing everything is safe. Don't fret, just enjoy the treat

 

[shortbun]

If I could afford it, I'd gladly pay lots of money for someone to
clean my house for me. Considering these folks don't get any
benefits and have to pay taxes out of their wages, $30-50
an hour doesn't seem high at all. If it's something you don't
want to do yourself....consider what it must be like to do it for
a living. I hold housecleaners in high esteem! Just think, they
may be talking about you on another board somewhere right
this minute.

 

[BrerMom]

The going rate around here is around $25/hour.


This makes for some VERY interesting reading and notice that she only earned $6-7 per hour working for a cleaning company:

From the Publisher
Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered as a woefully inexperienced homemaker returning to the workforce. So began a grueling, hair-raising, and darkly funny odyssey through the underside of working America.
Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- quite the same way again