Housekeeper in retirement?

Wait...


I thought house keepers were only for rich people! :D:D


When I was in my 30's, a single buddy of mine mentioned that he had a housekeeper in every 2 weeks. I was shocked. Never knew anyone with a house keeper. Also, everyone I knew also mowed their own grass. Guess I lived a sheltered life :cool:


Oh, we don't bother with a housekeeper. Got a robo vac and tile floor. Love our Bosch diswaher. We clean the baths and kitchen ourselves. Old habits are hard to break. When w*rking, we just tolerated a dirtier house and ate out more often so the kitchen stayed clean-ish.
 
For people who have a housekeeper and love the job he/she does, how did you go about finding a good one?

Word of mouth?
A maid service?

word-of-mouth to begin with but excellent resuits have kept us with our maid service since we moved into our current home in 1988. during that time we've had 3-different persons the most recent for just over 10-years now. she will be retiring in a year or two but i have no doubt that the service will find a suitable replacement for us. my concern is replacing the service if..when...the service owner decides to retire.
 
For people who have a housekeeper and love the job he/she does, how did you go about finding a good one?

Word of mouth?
A maid service?


My mother had house keepers once a week. She always got referrals via word of mouth.

Her favorite was her first whom she had until the house keeper retired. That lady would clean anything including windows, she would dust, wash, vacuum, mop, wax, iron, fold clothes, etc. Her theory was she was there anyway, she didn't care what type of housework she did. (My mother also cleaned the house prior to her coming and with her, so a lot of cleaning was actually done. :LOL:) They would also deep clean one room each visit. I remember being slightly annoyed as a teenager, having my drawers emptied so that they could be dusted and relined.
 
Old Microbiologist, love your name!

Im also an old microbiologist, retired 2 years ago after 41 years.
Did you work in Hungary? Or retire there from sonewhere else?
 
Yes, I have had one for years! I would never give her up. We always pick everything up before she comes so the house is super neat for at least a day or two afterward.
 
I have had a maid service for about 10 years. Once I became financially secure I considered it money well spent. I use a maid service company that sends a team of four for an hour every other week. In an hour they divide the work floors/dust/baths and kitchen etc. I clean clutter up first and leave while they work or sit on porch. I love to come home and smell the clean house and see it spotless. I am happy to provide employment to them and enjoy the splurge. If disaster struck I could cancel the service, but it would only be for true need of belt tightening. I don't expect to need that. I spend a lot of time and money helping family and this is one of the things I do for me.
 
For some reason, this reminds me of the old saw about always wearing clean underwear when you go out, in case you get into an accident and have to have emergency surgery. The surgeon might say, "You expect me to operate? Look at that underwear!"

"You expect me to clean? Look at this dirty house!"

When I wake up, my hair is quite disheveled and can only be remedied by shampoo. When I am farting around the house, I will wear a hat until I am ready to shower...but if I am leaving the house, I HAVE to shower to get my hair looking reasonable. Why you ask? I have a fear of being mistakenly arrested and having a mug shot that would look absolutely crazy if I had my morning bed head. Unreasonable fear? Most definitely. :LOL:
 
No house cleaner, or lawn service, or snow removal. I should get someone in once a year or so to do a deep cleaning. I do not like cleaning in general but also don't mind clutter or dust as long as nothing smells bad.
I like to cook so I have to do dishes and clean the table and counters daily. Probably should do the stove top more often. The old dog sheds a lot and lately having some accidents so vacuuming is daily and spot mopping getting frequent. Cat litter needs changing a few times a week. I can't see having someone in that many days a week.
I like doing the lawn and snow blowing. I would do those as a PT j*b if I needed money.

Thread has convinced me to follow up on getting a cleaner in for quarterly deep cleaning. Talked to one who said what she'd do but she never got back with a price. Maybe the enormity of the task scared her off.

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We don't have one and I help do some cleaning but I'm all for having a cleaning person come in. My wife doesn't care to have one at this stage in life but I hope she changes her mind.

My son and his future wife have one and I think she comes in every other week. They are busy people but you would think they could do it. Money isn't an issue for them, so if it can make their life easier and have a little more time for themselves, I guess I could have done it at their age too.
 
The outfits I've talked to, will do one initial deep cleaning for a rather large price. Then they come back every week or two, to keep from having to do another deep cleaning! That seems to be the preferred method.

I don't trust commercial deep cleaning. Real estate agents are the biggest customers, and this leads the companies to expect to do the same thing everywhere, every time - scrub like heck, steam-clean the tile (which you should not do to Saltillo tile) instead of mopping and towel-drying it, etc. Damage can result.

No house cleaner, or lawn service, or snow removal. I should get someone in once a year or so to do a deep cleaning.

Thread has convinced me to follow up on getting a cleaner in for quarterly deep cleaning. Talked to one who said what she'd do but she never got back with a price. Maybe the enormity of the task scared her off.

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I don't have regular house cleaning done, but I have thought about having it done once a month or so. I was thinking of starting that pre-Covid then deferred it. I am back to thinking it. I have a retired friend and she has someone clean for her about once a month.

In your case, though, you seem to have absolutely no financial reason why you can't have one. Therefore, I would definitely hire someone to do it at least monthly. You and later your DH could handle the in between times. Alternatively you might have some once a season (i.e. quarterly) come in and do deep cleaning. That might not save much money though.
 
We had a cleaning lady for about 4 years before we retired and continued with her after our retirement in 2019. She cleans way better than I do. We always leave the house when she arrives and come home to find it sparkling; I really like that. And the money to pay her is well within our retirement budget.



This is our situation. We keep her, because I’ve developed osteoarthritis, and my husband is very messy. Every two weeks he knows he has to pick up his clutter for her, which works better than me nagging at him to do it. Plus, she pet sits for us when we are gone and we trust her.
 
We have a housecleaner every other week, I love it and wouldn't stop. Our house is 4300 sq ft. We also have a gardener and pool service.
 
My long-time housekeeper retired this year when I did. I thought I might try to do it myself, but I hate it, and I’m bad at it, so I’m seeking out another.
 
I love cleaning and I have to have a clean home every day I see clients so a weekly or bi-weekly would not work for me. I deep clean the house once a quarter, but vacuum and mop at least 2 times a week, sometimes more during monsoon season with the mud. I am always cooking as well so the counters and dishes are done every day.
 
We have a regular (biweekly) housecleaner, and she is worth every penny and more! No marital strife about cleaning and we love coming home to our freshly cleaned home when she has been here.
 
I can add that I recently bought 3 different robot cleaning systems. Two are floor mopping/vacuum robots and the third is a window cleaning robot. The latter takes some supervision but does a more than adequate job on large windows and we have several that are 20 feet high so this is a godsend. The floor robots are interesting. I have a Xiaomi Mop plus and it works great. Once it memorizes your floorplan (takes 3 uninterrupted cleaning cycles) then it works great. The mop function is really just a rag that damp mops the already clean floor. It works pretty well especially if you use distilled/deionized water. The other is a Neatsvor Mopping robot which is similar to the Xiaomi. The Xiaomi will mop and vacuum simultaneously but the Neatsvor does it separately. Both use laser guidance and create excellent maps.

What I have found is with these floor robots running daily we don't need much cleaning anymore. The windows I do maybe every 2 weeks or so. Each takes about 15 minutes per side to do. Between all of that, we really don't need a housekeeper to come except once every 2 weeks. Maybe when they get real humanistic robots we won't need to do any cleaning at all? I see this is going to come and maybe soon.

I already have a pool cleaning robot that makes that task simple as well and we have had that for 10 years. Many years ago I had a robot lawnmower that worked well for our relatively simple yard back then (it was over 20 years ago). This garden is very complex so I can't see any of the current lawn mowing robots being capable of handling a garden this complicated. But the mulching mower I had mowed the lawn every day so it always looked newly mowed. It wasn't smart and only bounced around o the electronic wire perimeter and/or trees and shrubs. The newer ones are smarter but I think still require installing an underground wire perimeter for signaling the edges. Maybe that will be next if they are smart enough to avoid obstacles and stay out of bedding areas (and swimming pool and large ponds).

I will say we have little strife over cleanliness except I am a very disorganized person and my wife a fanatic for order. I am multitasking and she is a monotasker. But, I am very ordered in the kitchen (as I was in all my laboratories). My man cave/office is another matter entirely and as long as she stays out we have no issues. Her desk area is much larger than mine and roughly 500 sq ft for her and 250 sq ft for me, looks directly into my area (we share the space which is our entire ground floor which is on the main level but considered a basement as it is on a sloping lot) but somehow she doesn't actually see it. I've got all our media servers, router, security system, 3D printers, 4 computers, etc. running in there along with guitars, painting easel etc. plus a workbench crammed with electronics projects, soldering station, microscope, plus 3D print projects in various states of completion. I usually have at least multiple projects in some state of progress (usually waiting on parts or rethinking my approach). Anyway, she seems to have figured out a way to not see any of it. She is very smart! Of course, her area is also nutty as she has 3 computers running and a very large photography studio with backdrops, tables, etc. It is tidy though and I generally stay out of her way. As she is so mono she cannot be interrupted so when she is working I avoid her unless summoned. I was a helicopter pilot for part of my military life and special forces prior to becoming a microbiologist so I can handle many things simultaneously and interruptions are okay for me. We make a good team though as long as I don't irritate her too much. I generally go off during the day mountain biking, hiking, snowboarding, sailing, or whatever to get out of her way. It works well for us.
 

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