bestwifeever, elisap and athena53.......... I thought I'd get some responses! Hee, hee...... I'm glad to hear you are all busy rolling up your sleeves and cleaning between visits by the professional. It's amazing how little (essentially zero) that DIY supplemental activity has been mentioned in the 3+ pages of posts.......
Our feeling was always that 3 or 4 hours bi-weekly cannot result in a "deep cleaning." You can get the "smell of PineSol" alright, but you're not really going to deep clean a whole house in 3 or 4 hours bi-weekly. So, for better or for worse, here's what we did/do.
Pre-FIRE while we were both working, we had a pro cleaner (independent business person and someone we knew) come in for a half day every Friday. She would spend a couple hours doing the usual basics with the vacuum cleaner, dust rag and bathroom/kitchen sanitizers. Then she'd spend about two hours on that week's project such as windows, ceiling fan blades, empty and clean the fridge, clean the stove, etc. We did nothing other than try to be tidy and keep things put away. This was fairly expensive, but it kept us from having to figure out who was doing what and when. She did it all. And 4 hours a week was not a minute too much for the project. That's why I was questioning the 3 - 4 hours bi-weekly or even per month some folks were quoting.
During this same time, my MIL came weekly (also Fridays) and did our laundry. That was great! She was fastidious, even ironing my undies, doing alterations (fabulous seamstress) and sewing patches on Cub Scout shirts for the grand kids!
With retirement a decade ago, we found that paying for a half day of cleaning time every week suddenly seemed more expensive. But, every other week didn't get the job done to our liking. Rather than figure out some scheme to split the work with a pro cleaner such as you folks are doing, we just got organized and started doing it ourselves. And MIL got furloughed too as we just weren't wearing clothes than were troublesome to launder and we had almost zero ironing. (Although I do miss having my undies ironed, folded and put away with precision.)
Our house is smallish, we're relatively tidy and we're pretty organized about how we get things done. DIY is working out OK. Admittedly, things aren't quite as spiffy as when the pro-cleaner and MIL were pulling the plow.
I did start using a lawn service. We've been traveling far too much to impose on the neighbors or the kids (who live in a neighboring suburb) to be cutting our grass.
And I've been paying for some other repair and maintenance services such as vehicle oil changes, cleaning and inspecting the HVAC system, cleaning the gutters, etc., that I used to do myself.
It's an ongoing journey.
Glad you folks are enjoying the way you're doing it!
