Poll: housecleaning

Heffalump

Which do you think is a better choice?  We used to have a woman come, but we lost her phone number, so I'm curious about your opinion.

C&S1030

FI's housekeeper cleans the crumbs out of the toaster.  Thorough.

MinM

Personally, I would ask for a recommendation from a person I trusted. It would quickly disolve into that episode of Friends where Monica tries to have  a housekeeper but can't let go and freaks out. Because that's me - Monica.

tawillers

I have never had anyone come clean my house.  Unless you count my mom coming while we were on our honeymoon.  She did it to surprise us.

But I'm not trusting enough.  Also, I don't think anyone could do a good enough job.  I've got issues.

Butter Cookie

I would go with an independent company. That way they should have insurance in case someone gets hurt or screws up something (like dropping bleach on the carpet)

zsazsa-stl

If you can get someone recommended that is independant or part of a small company I would go with that.  They have less overhead and can charge less and/or afford to do a better job. The lady I use is independant and I've gotten to know her and I trust her completely.  She even watches the cat when we are out of town.

DG1

FWIW, when we got quotes, Merry Maids was CRAZY expensive.  I also learned this week that their parent company is uber-christian, which makes me not want to give them money anyway.

We ended up with a small independent company and have been very happy.  My grandmother used a few different individual ladies over the years and had 99% good experiences (they were recommended by others).  It was the 1% that really tainted our opinion of all of that. 

Her longtime, very trusted cleaning lady let her sister help her clean one day.  The sister was a drug addict and cleaning lady made a mistake in trusting the sister.  Sister stole grandmother's wedding rings and some other stuff, too.  The cleaning lady felt awful but no one could prove anything, and of course sister wouldn't admit anything and certainly wouldn't give the rings back.  So my grandmother had to fire the cleaning lady, which was really a bummer, because she herself was very honest and hardworking.