The Lazy Genius Podcast - #145 - How to Hire a Housecleaner

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

Listen, I know this is super specific. I know this topic is privileged and it comes with baggage. But I also know it’s important to talk about these things, particularly if you’re in a season of life where something’s gotta give. This episode has practical thoughts about hiring a housecleaner, and a little pep talk about letting go of the shame and embarrassment that often comes with asking for help. Stuff Mentioned I first mentioned hiring a housecleaner in my monthly newsletter, The Latest Lazy Letter. If you don’t receive it and wish you did, you can get on the list here. I’ll be LIVE on Instagram this Thursday around noon EST answering your questions about hiring a housecleaner. Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everybody. You're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 145, How to Hire a House Cleaner. Listen, I know this is nichey, I know this is privileged, I know this has baggage. But I also know it's important to talk about, particularly if you're in a season of life where something's got to give. I mentioned in a recent latest lazy letter, which is my monthly newsletter that I had hired a house cleaner. And the response was something else, y'all. Pretty much every single person who responded said something like, oh, I wish I could do that. That would be amazing. I just feel bad hiring somebody to do something that I could do myself. Listen, we're going to put an end to that thinking right now. So yes, this episode, it will have some practical thoughts about hiring a house cleaner. How you find one, what they do, what you can expect, all of that. But we're going to start with a pep talk because I'm the boss and it is my podcast and I'm about to get feisty. Before I get feisty, a quick reminder about that latest lazy letter.

I send out one newsletter a month with a ton of super helpful, purposeful info. Books I read, why you might want to read them too, podcast episodes to listen to without having to listen to like the entire show, thoughts that I only share there like about hiring a house cleaner and lots more. If you would like to join that VIP list that gets the latest lazy letter, there is a link in the show notes, or you can go to the lazy genius collective.com slash join. I would love to see you there. Okay, hiring a house cleaner. Okay, so should we start with like why it's okay to hire a house cleaner or how to actually do it? I think we're going to start with it being okay. Let's lay out a couple of suppositions. First, not everyone can afford a house

cleaner. I get this. For years, we couldn't. We could barely afford meat. A limited fixed income is a real thing. So please hear me from the beginning that I am not saying that you're allowed to have a house cleaner. You're just not trying hard enough to find the money. Some people literally don't have the money. You could definitely use one and might be mad at me right now for talking about it when you're so desperate for some outside help, but you can't afford. I just want you to know that I see you in that. It is not easy to have limited resources without question. Second supposition, hiring someone to clean your house isn't a moral issue. It is a choice. Everything I say from here on out is based purely on choice and what works for different people. My passion about you

feeling justified in your desire to have help, it is not a judgment on people who don't want help in the same way. We all need help and we all get to choose what that help is for ourselves and for our own lives, how they're set up, like as our individual lives, right? So that's our starting place. Now, I want to talk specifically to those of you who have the money to probably hire someone to come clean your house once every couple of weeks, but you feel badly for spending your money on something like that because you can clean your house yourself. You are who I am talking to at this particular moment. Okay, you can ask for help. You can also pay for help. There is no rule anywhere. that says you have to do everything yourself.

I sometimes imagine all of the things that I could do if I really just took the time to do them, things that I don't have to outsource. I could change my own oil in the car. I could cut my own hair. I could make my own yogurt. I could grind my own meat. I could sew my own clothes.

I could paint my own living room. I could cook my own meals from scratch every single night. I could do my own taxes. I could make my son's class Valentine's Day cards from construction paper and glue. I could do all of those things in theory. that's YouTube is very helpful all of those things are within my scope of learning if given the time and they are all things that someone somewhere on earth many many someone's actually do tons of people

make their own yogurt people make their own clothes my stepdad still changes the oil and his and my mom's cars i've done my taxes every year since i was old enough to need to do my own taxes yes you can clean your own house i've got a ton of resources in lazy genius world that can help you do that and I have done all of them, and some I still do. I clean my kitchen every night. I tidy every day. I declutter and organize. But I no longer do the regular tasks of cleaning the bathrooms and floors and dusting and such. I could, but I would be sacrificing something else in order to make that happen. We think that we can keep adding to our lives and that we'll just have to figure out how to keep doing all the things we've always done. Your kids like finally get old enough to be an elementary

school. And so you get a part-time job and you fill your bucket doing something you love. You think that you're still going to have time to cook and clean and run errands because your kids are out of the way now and you'll have more time. But now you're working. Now those early morning grocery runs on your way to preschool, they don't happen anymore because school starts sooner, elementary school starts sooner, and you're going to work now. You no longer have the middle of the day to spend 10 minutes cleaning, 10 minutes prepping dinner. And you can't figure out how to get home in the afternoon with the kids after school and get everything done because you're suddenly more behind than you've ever been. It doesn't make any sense because they're in school now.

That's because you added without taking away. This is why I wish that it was a built-in thing for all new moms to get meals brought to them for at least the first three months of having a new baby, at least three months. You think you can still cook meals once you get settled after a couple of weeks, but you have added the life and care of an entirely new human. You have added a ton of stress to your life by sitting still and living groundhog day days and not getting even close to enough sleep. In fact, those pockets of time that you used to spend like magic questioning dinner or whatever else, like what can I do now to make dinner easier later or make anything easier later, is now spent napping because that's how God intended it when a new baby is around. Or like when

your oldest is 10 and your youngest is three, that's my situation, because y'all, I still take naps most afternoons, like naps are still important, even if you don't have babies. You can't expect to maintain the same level of keeping up with everything when you add a new baby and you take away sleep. You just can't. If you would absolutely love to hire a house cleaner, but you feel badly doing it, even if you can afford it, that is rooted in shame. Shame that you think that you should be able to do it all. You have some kind of expectation, or maybe you assume that others have an expectation of you, that if you hire a house cleaner, you're lazy, you think you're better than everybody else, you're unwise with your money, or any number of things we tell ourselves.

Y'all, I will shout this from the dagam rooftops that hiring a house cleaner to come to my house every two weeks makes me a better person. I run a business. I have an employee. I have three kids at various ages with different schedules and needs. I love being a good friend and a host and a member of my church and my community. I love reading books and taking naps and making food for my family. If I want all of those things, things that matter to me more than anything else, I have to be lazy about other stuff that don't matter as much. For me, that is cleaning. I don't like cleaning at all. Why do you think I had to lazy genius so many aspects of it all these years? I have a lot of content around it because it was a really annoying problem that I really

wanted to solve. I wanted to make it as painless and easy as I could. And for a while, that was doing lazy genius routines using that Toadie app. We'll link to it and all the other things that I have mentioned over the years. Now, I pay someone $125 every other week to spend five hours making my house shiny. And it is worth every single penny. And it's not because I'm lazy. It's not because you're lazy. It's because other things, matter more. And you want to be able to put your actual individual human energy into those things. You don't want to outsource what matters. Outsource what doesn't, but still has to get done. Side note, this is the first year. I have hired an accountant to do my taxes. And I could cry at what a

relief it is. She is creating like forms. She's asking me simple questions. She's going to do my taxes. I used to spend an entire Saturday in the fetal position surrounded by papers. I did. I didn't. I didn't understand hoping to not get arrested. I used to have to do that because, again, we had hardly any money. Now we have enough to hire an accountant and I can focus on things that matter that I want to take part in myself and she can do my taxes. It's amazing. So you're allowed to hire a house cleaner. If the only thing stopping you is shame or what other people think, those are not good enough reasons. I'll make you a deal. Hire a house cleaner to clean your house just one time. Pay attention to how you feel when you walk back in your house and see if that feeling and all of those ripples

that come from that feeling are worth it. I will almost guarantee that they are. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dacker Keltener, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay, let's really quickly go through a couple of practical things that a lot of you have asked ever since I mentioned hiring a house cleaner in that newsletter.

How much does it cost? Okay, so it depends on the person, where you live, depends on like the size of your house and your city. You know, I'm sure it all varies. I pay, like I said, $125 every other week, $250 a month. month. Our house is about 2,000 square feet with two and a half bathrooms, which I think usually costs more in the breakdown for a lot of house cleaners. Next, you can choose what rooms get clean and what jobs get done. I decided that we would not include my kids' bedrooms or the playroom and what the house cleaners tackle, mostly because I don't want to have to tidy those rooms

every two weeks. They're full of Legos and like elaborate train tracks. And it's just not worth it. We'll clean those rooms ourselves as a family whenever we feel like they're needed. Next, there were questions about what a house cleaner does. Whatever you ask them to do. I will say that most will have a set fee for your house for whatever task they do. They clean the same things every single time. Otherwise, the fee changes and it just gets complicated. So our house cleaner does floors and dusting and surfaces in the rooms that we've asked for.

But anything out of that purview, it doesn't count. like if I wanted her to clean the ceiling fans or something, that would adjust the fee. You can't just ask them to like, hey, can you add the ceiling fans to your list? That's not how it works. It's easier, generally at least, it's easier for them to keep the same fee and the same task list week after week. Something that doesn't get talked about as much, but it's important to remember, is that the house needs to be tidy before the house cleaner comes. They don't know where your stuff goes and they can't spend the limited hours they have picking up all the stuff. That's why we kept the kids rooms off the list. There's just no way I was going to tidy those over and over again.

But the night before our house cleaner comes, we do a big family tidy. Everything that doesn't always stay on a surface, like lamps and candles and stuff, it gets put away. Everything on the floor that doesn't belong there, you know, like things on the floor that we pick up, shoes, toys, all of that gets put away. I also try and put a lot of my like skincare bottles and like those individual bathroom things in a basket so it's easier to move it off the sink all at once rather than one bottle of time. Now I just keep everything in a basket, so it's easier. But if you have an untidy house, you're putting your house cleaner in an unfair position to not only pick up, but do extra work that is outside of the set fee and agreed upon tasks that you set up. So you just have to know that.

And finally, how do you find somebody? And my advice for sure is ask around. Ask Facebook. Ask friends, just put it out there if anyone has a house cleaning service that they'd recommend. A couple of you mentioned that you didn't want to ask because you didn't want people to think badly of you for hiring a house cleaner. You guys? Okay, you're giving work to people who are offering their services, right? You're keeping people in employment. You're giving permission to other women like you who feel weird saying it, but want the freedom to hire a house cleaner. You're giving them permission to say that out loud too. There's just, just no reason to not ask. Most of our embarrassment around this is rooted in false pretenses.

If someone is weird with you about hiring somebody, I'm going to guess that deep down, she resents that you're getting something she wishes she had and is going to make you pay for it by being judgmental. Whether that's intentional on her part or completely subconscious, it's still a very brittle reason to make someone feel badly for making a choice that meets their needs and helps them focus time and energy on what matters to them. You're allowed to do this. and you don't have to justify it either. If you're single and childless, you can still hire a house cleaner. There's no set of rules that determines who's allowed to do this. So hire someone to clean your house for you so you can spend time on what matters and on what you individually want to do. So just ask around.

See who people like. Try someone out the first time. If it doesn't work, you get someone else. Am I done being feisty? This is like several weeks. This is like several weeks. weeks over the last few weeks of Kendra being feisty. Obviously, in finding someone, like, you can totally use sites like Angie's List, stuff that have reviews, you know, I just think that real person recommendations are the best place to find somebody. A friend of mine recommended who I use and I've been so pleased. And full disclosure, I hired another house cleaning company several years ago for a short season when things were just like a little nutty in our family. And I didn't love how they did things. They, like, they use their own cleaners instead of

mine, which I just thought they smelled bad. Something was broken, but hidden, which wasn't great. And things like, they just weren't as shiny as I could get them myself. I just, so I just never made another appointment. It doesn't have to be complicated, right? If you are unhappy with the job, talk to whoever's in charge of the company, which isn't always who cleaned your house. Sometimes it's like one person who does all the things. But often it's someone who runs a company and has a team of cleaners, you can kindly but directly address your needs. And if those needs aren't met a second time, it's just not a good fit. And you can try again and find someone else. I think that's why personal recommendations will likely work better because you

know the person who's doing the recommending and can ask him or her like specific questions about your expectations and what you think you need. Okay. So that is a lot of words about hiring a house cleaner. But I hope it was hopeful. Just don't let embarrassment or shame stop you. I can point to that choice as one of the most impactful, like, single decisions I've ever made. Truly, to completely, like, take the regular cleaning of my home off my plate completely. It's amazing. Okay. I'm going to stop for now.

Thank you so much for listening. So, so much. I hope that you join me this Thursday on Instagram to talk live about this topic. I will be there at The Lazy Genius around noon Eastern time on Thursday. And all of the, well, not all, but like a good number. of past IG lives are in my IGTV channel under my profile. They're all labeled and titled so you can know what they are. And you can go watch it anytime. Okay, that is all for today. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You, wherever you get your podcasts.