The short answer, YES!
I’ve recently started outsourcing the bane of my existence, cleaning. Now I don’t mind tidying up, doing laundry and just generally keeping things clutter-free, however, I detest scrubbing a toilet, tub or cleaning my stove top and floors. That routine maintenance cleaning takes forever but really makes a difference in combined with a clutter free space. Between basic everyday cleaning, yard-work and general day-to-day tasks, I started feeling overwhelmed. Our house gets noticeably dirtier now since we live and work here full-time!
I wrestled with the idea about hiring a maid service. Technically, all the tasks they do I CAN do. I’m young, able-bodied and if I budget time a bit better, I could keep up with it but it takes me much longer than a team of 3 to clean my entire house. The definition of frugal is, “sparing or economical with regard to money or food.” So at what point is it more economical to hire a maid service versus doing it on your own?
Let’s break it down in hypothetical numbers based on salary averages for someone of my SES and the quotes received in the DC metro area:
If I make $40/hour and the maid service costs me $150 per month, I would have to clean over 3.75 hours each month for a housekeeper to make sense financially for cost of my time. Though I have a modest sized house (under 2,000 sqft) I would estimate it takes double that time for me to clean the entire house similar to what the maids do, meanwhile it takes them 1.5 hours for a team of three to clean the entire house. The maids also consistently do a better job too.
While monthly visits are not enough to keep my house in a respectable state each week, I find it easier to maintain week-to-week when I have a team of people do a complete reset of my home. One aspect that I love is how the maids change my bed sheets allowing me to only do it once a month myself, which is really no easy task with my youngest dog, Ruby, getting in the way. She LOVES to lay on the sheets as I try to put them on the bed and refuses to move. I know some people change their bed sheets only once a month but with two dogs who sleep in bed with me, that’s not an option.
Surely these justifications are attempting to offload my guilt over outsourcing my chores. I’ve always seen using a maid service as taking the easy way out and a waste of money since I can do it myself. But the reduction of stress, the boost in happiness and increase in free time makes it the economical choice for me.
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