Should you hire a housekeeper?

If you're so busy that you run out of clean socks, or find yourself spending more time scrubbing floors than playing with your kids, it might be time to at least consider hiring a bit of help around the house.

We all know how stressful and time-consuming everyday life can be when you have a home, a family, and a full-time job. With only 24 hours in the day, keeping the house clean, the groceries stocked, and the laundry moving can feel like an impossible feat.

And if you're frugal, hiring some help might seem out of the question. After all, why should you pay someone to do a task you can easily do yourself?

Firstly, if you have someone come clean your home on a regular basis you can focus on the daily stuff - wiping down counters, picking up toys, laundry, and dishes. And instead of feeling overwhelmed because you have so much more to do you can relax because no matter how busy life gets, your housekeepers visit is never more than  few weeks away.

Here are some signs you might need to hire a housekeeper:

You're planning your life around avoiding chores

Working part-time or full-time can take a toll on your body and your mental health, and that's especially true if you're also running a household and taking care of kids. And sometimes the "extra," mundane stuff is enough to make you downright miserable.

If you find yourself wearing the same clothes for days in order to avoid laundry, or stopping by McDonalds for dinner to avoid dirtying up more dishes or your kitchen, it might be time to hire some help.

Your husband is down to his last pair of underwear

This has happened to me more than once. After working several 8-hour days in  row, I realized that no one in the house had any clean dress socks or underwear for work the next day. So instead of coming home from a long day to relax, I had to spend some late night hours doing laundry instead.

This is a telltale sign that it might be time to outsource something - anything. When you don't have enough hours in the day to keep basic laundry items clean, something has to give.

Your weekly pay is 4x or more than what you would pay someone

When you aren't earning a lot, paying $100-$400 for a housekeeper can be out of the question. But, what if you earn considerably more than what you would pay someone else?

This is an important question to ponder if you're thinking about hiring help. Lets say you pay $130 every other week for a house cleaner to clean your house from top to bottom for four hours. If you invested that time into overtime at your job or your side job, could you make that much or more? If the answer is yes, then it definitely makes sense to hire some help.

You're missing out on quality time with your partner, spouse, or children

When you work full-time and have a family, sometimes the weekends are all you've got left. But, would you rather spend your Saturday afternoon doing something fun with your family - or watching life go by while you deep clean your kitchen and lint roll your couch?

The fact that there are only 940 Saturdays from the time your child is born and they day they turn 18 means you should spend that time making memories. If you spend that time cleaning instead, you could live to regret it.

The bottom line

While it's important to save money for the future, it's equally important to have a happy life today. And some times, that means figuring out what you can and cant do - and hiring help when you can't be everywhere at once.

So if you're struggling to keep up with your to-do list, give yourself permission to at least explore the idea of hiring help. And remember, if always running on empty, it might actually make sense to hire someone to mow the lawn, clean your house, or deliver your groceries.

There's only 24 hours in a day, and its up to us to make the most of them. And sometimes, that means being smart enough to realize we need time for ourselves and our families more than anything else.

Katie's Peachy Clean
Eco-friendly green house cleaning in Tulsa, Oklahoma
918-640-3019
Katie @ peachycleantulsa.com
peachycleantulsa.com

Green House Cleaning December 2015 in Tulsa, Oklahoma!!

Happy Holidays!

This season is always the busiest for house cleaning and I love it! I just hired and trained up a new girl who is doing awesome so my schedule is pretty open! I have just about everyday in December available so call me, text me, or email me!! Keep me busy! I have tons of days to do deep cleans to get your home in tip-top pristine condition and looking like new.

Please do keep in mind though that my slots can still go fast so please don't wait last minute because I would hate to not be available for you.

So if you have family coming in to town or you are just too busy this holiday season, house cleaning is one thing you don't have to worry about because I can get you covered :)

Email is my preferred method of contact for quotes!!

Pet-Friendly green cleaning lady Tulsa, Oklahoma
Katie Hampton
Katie@peachycleantulsa.com
918-640-3019
peachycleantulsa.com

House Cleaning experience with Groupon

Okay, first off let me explain why I did a Groupon deal to begin with: Every house cleaner has their slow season, and that's usually right after the holidays and around tax time because everyone seems to be trying to catch up after their holiday spending and tax payments. And during this slow time my cleaners still need full time hours. Last year I had a lot of amazing cleaners quit due to hours so this year I didn't want to loose anymore fabulous cleaners so I decided to try this Groupon deal out.

Second, let me explain how Groupon works: They take your service, offer it at 50% off, then take 50% of that for themselves, then charge you a fee for credit card processing. So lets take my 3 hour house cleaning as an example, its normally $100, they are selling it at $50, I get $25, after the processing fee I get $23 for a 3 hour cleaning. Keep in mind, that I do pay my workers a good hourly wage plus mileage so I end up actually loosing money doing this deal but I'm a people pleaser to a fault (probably my biggest flaw honestly) and I was willing to take the hit for the people that work for me to get decently paid during slow season.

I actually lasted I think 3 months before I completely shut off my deal for good. This is what ended up happening:

Groupon told me it would max out at 10 coupons sold per deal a month which I had 3 deals so my thought was 'Okay, 30 cleanings a month isn't bad'...it DID not shut off ...within two weeks I had sold 70 and it just kept getting worse. I was getting 20+ calls a day and my voicemail box was getting full on the daily. This a small cleaning business, not a franchise, so it was just me being a one man show trying to keep up with all of this

It was okay at first but it completely plummeted, I was booked wall to wall for 4 weeks constantly with no wiggle room or flexibility. So in this case, if someone needs to reschedule, their shit out of luck, if someone calls in sick, I'm shit out of luck. And I ended up double-booking, over-booking, getting my schedule mixed up, forgetting to write people in, etcetera.

I was way in over my head and next thing I knew people were pretty pissed off at me, and honestly I can't blame them, so please take this as my public apology if you weren't treated with the professionalism from my company that you deserved. I would love to say it wasn't my fault but that's a cop out, like I said being a people pleaser is my biggest flaw. I can't please everyone and if I try to I fail, and I learned that the hard way. And I say this because when I did have someone call in sick or have some other reason they couldn't come in, I had no where to put you. Everyone I had was booked for 4 weeks straight, and I didn't want to call people and tell them their cleaning just wasn't going to happen, and that was my mistake, that's where I  really messed up.

Another problem I seemed to run into was people either underestimating the dirtiness of their home or expecting more than one cleaner. Like I discussed I would make $23 a clean...so I can barely afford to send one cleaner to your home, let alone two. So they would buy a 3 hour clean and expect one person to be able to clean their entire 2,200 square foot home in that time or a 4 hour clean and expect them to be able to clean 4 bathrooms covered in mold plus the kitchen and all of their floors. Which I will tell you now, it is not really possible for a first time clean to be done in that amount of time, first time cleanings usually take anywhere between 6 and 8 hours IF you want it cleaned very thoroughly.

Which when I started this deal I made a 3 and 4 hour option because really I expected the home to be a little less dirty then they ended up being, but honestly it attracted the homes that haven't been cleaned in a year or more.

So I'm going to end this with 'would I recommend running a Groupon deal for your house cleaning business?' and the answer is 'No'. Not unless you want to either go bankrupt not making enough for overhead or you either want to tarnish your name and make a lot of people mad at you.

I can say I'll probably never run one again. Before Groupon every client was happy, I never got anything under a 5 star review, and now people are mad because they had their cleaning missed, communication wasn't great (like I said I couldn't keep up with everyone), there cleaner didn't work fast enough and get enough done, or the cleaner worked too fast and wasn't thorough enough, it was always something and I never used to have those problems. So now I probably have to spend the rest of this year making it right and rebuilding my good business name because of this Groupon deal.

Please don't let what happened tarnish your opinion of me, you live and you learn, and this was my first time doing a Groupon deal and I definitely learned not to do it again, Thank you!

That green cleaning lady in Tulsa, Ok'
Katie Hampton
www.peachycleantulsa.com