Good decision to kick them to the curb. I couldn’t keep that kind of crew either. And for their ‘management‘ to act as if they didn’t care is even worse.

We furloughed our service by necessity when we were out of town when Stay Put was ordered. We're back home but we're not calling them back anytime soon.

Elmer, who's doing all the cleaning now?

Jane

Haha, my wife and I do it all, there's no one else. The tasks I did yesterday were vacuuming (half the house), cleaning the toilets and making dinner. Joint tasks (like changing the bed) we do together. Otherwise, we alternate with the others.

How frustrating for you, Sec Steve. I hope you can find someone conscientious to help you.

Thanks Fun2BHere, but we're done with using anyone other then ourselves. Just amazes me that people just don't seem to care about how they present themselves or their service. This is third service now and all three have been disappointing.

Love the fact that they ask for you to post a rating on their website, but then if they don't like it, it gets taken down.

Posted a negative review a couple of days after posting this. It was there for one day and then POOF! gone. So reposted it two days later. Same thing.

Can't stand the criticism, don't ask for an honest review.

Next door neighbor chatted with me a few days later after seeing my post on a different site. Like us, they had received the flyer and were considering hiring them. Not going to happen now.

Makes me wonder why they are in business in the first place.

Three months ago renters had the carpets steam cleaned, part of the move out contract. They put down hot dirty water, by the gallons! Wore no masks. Now I've had to buy a dehumidifier, stopping by to reset the three hour timer. Trying to get ALL the water out that is now saturating the foundation in the basement. UGH! How do THEY stay in business....?

Yikes, I know it is different for different folks but I would never want anyone else in my house, ever! How would anyone know what to do with my things?

It is hard to imagine strangers in my bathroom wiping things down with spray cleaners and such.

My own personal strategy is to remove as many obstacles as possible and make it as easy to keep clean as possible. Less stuff, less cleaning around stuff.

It is hard to hire anyone to do anything. You never know what kind of bargain you are making. I just avoid it as much as possible.

"I would never want anyone else in my house, ever! How would anyone know what to do with my things?"

If you have something needing special treatment, you either explain what you want done or if it's something you're skittish about, ask they leave it for you to do. The second time they come, they're no longer strangers. It's really not a big deal.

Most cleaning tasks don't require a high degree of skill or training. It's a labor saving service for a homeowner, just like a gardener. People choose to either use such services or not.

I do it all myself. Monday is the day for floors. Carpet, rugs and other.

Tuesday is bathrooms.

Every other Wednesday is windows (inside, the outside is semi-annually).

I mow my own grass as needed and the use the edger and string trimmer as needed.

I deadhead flowers on a regular basis.

I take yard waste to the curb every Thursday and the garbage and recycling containers on Friday morning.

I get the car serviced every four months.

I also volunteer for several hours every Wednesday morning at a shelter for abused women and their children.

My wife cooks and tries (not very successfully) to keep the kitchen neat.

The idea of getting someone to come in and do stuff? Outrageous!

I will give everyone on here a hint. If you have to move into senior housing one of the requirements for the ones I have looked at was that once a month someone will come in and clean where you live. I suspect it is two fold they are also checking for damage. Some independent living places may not have this but when you get to Assisted living expect it.

dallasannie, I can't imagine what kind of an area and clientele you were exposed to. There may be an exception or two but I'm pretty sure everyone, family and friends, we know uses some sort of cleaning service in normal times. Many have continued to do so even though we haven't. No pill or alcohol addicts in the group that I know of. Your generalizations are pretty wild and I think unfounded.

Do you entertain non-family people in your house (in normal times)? We do, including sometimes people we've recently met, little different from strangers. Our crew isn't made of strangers, it's the same people each time and we've had them for many years.

I'm not sure how you would consider having invited visitors as being an invasion or that smells are left behind but do what works for you. You can always open windows for fresh air.

jim, you wouldn't think of hiring such services and I wouldn't think of not hiring such services. We're getting by without the indoor ones for now. I appreciate the gardener coming every week. Everyone has their own preferences and priorities, no right or wrong.

" If you have to move into senior housing one of the requirements for the ones I have looked at was that once a month someone will come in and clean where you live. "

This must vary considerably. At the senior apartment complex where a family oldster lives, thorough cleaning is done weekly and light cleaning is done midweek. They'll wash sheets (resident owned) and change the bed as often as is requested, within reason. This is not an independent living area but light assistance on an as-needed basis. The housekeeping charge is included as part of the (non-subsidized) rent.

My comment was more of a heads up so if anyone expected complete privacy when they reach that age/stage they would be better prepared.

The ones we looked at in Minneapolis had the monthly cleaning. The ones here were weekly. Anything additional had an additional charge.

No one knows anything about what else you've experienced but didn't mention.

no, Elmer, these WERE the people that I cleaned for. And, they were all at least an upper middle class group and I think that all three of these women knew each other, and shared a social group. They all lived in the same neighborhood. They were a pretty unhappy bunch of women and pretty dysfunctional.

This was in the early 70s and the world was a different place.

There was one other couple that were not part of that group and they were really, really strange birds for sure. They took no pains to hide from me some very private things that they should have kept to themselves.

This was in a college town and I was a needy student.

My point is that the act of a stranger cleaning your personal spaces exposes so much of your personal life. That is all I am saying. I don't know what you think is an unfounded generalization. I made no generalization. This WAS my experience as a house cleaner and it certainly is not unfounded.

I didn't make any general statement about people who hire house cleaners. I WAS the house cleaner and this was my experience with THESE women. I will bet that some house cleaners could really tell some tales. That is all just too personal and I don't want any part of that on either end of it.

But, back to the question of cleaning......how could anyone clean up the mess that is my desk at this moment? It is full of some craft things, some photo sorting and a stack of things that need to be tended too. Unless this desk is cleaned off, this room will never be cleaned and put in order. No one can do that but me.

Just, noooo..............fine for those who want it, but I see so many reasons that it might not be right for a lot of other folks.

I have no further comment about the crowd whose houses you cleaned other than to say that what you describe was bizarre, very unusual, and something you perhaps should have left behind and moved on from. Rather than guarding the experiences as something you still (wrongly) think to be characteristic of others, that poisoned your attitude and feelings decades later.

"My point is that the act of a stranger cleaning your personal spaces exposes so much of your personal life."

Do you feel invaded when your doctor asks you how many times a week you defecate? How frequently you have relations with a partner and what kind of relations you have? Or when you tax preparer asks you why your income went down or if you have income from sources not reported that should be declared? No, because all these things are characteristic of the services performed. So too with cleaners. Believe me, most could really care less. They arrive to clean and then leave to do it again somewhere else.

A messy desk? Most cleaners wouldn't touch it. We joke that we have to clean the house before the cleaners come. That means putting things away and straightening up so that the places we want cleaned are easily accessible and nothing gets misplaced.

Make your own choices but your imagination has carried your feelings about this to an unfortunate destination of misunderstanding.

Maybe bizarre, but def. not unusual. Esp. in the 70s. And it still goes on today if you read or pay attention to the news, etc.

Nowadays there are maybe different substances to abuse.

"Maybe bizarre, but def. not unusual. Esp. in the 70s. And it still goes on today if you read or pay attention to the news, etc."

I thought the topic was using cleaning services in this century, not in the distant past. Substance abuse and addition? Is this widespread among your family and circle of friends and neighbors? Not among mine. Sure, it exists. How is that relevant to the topic?

I think I've said my peace, other than to reiterate that I find it very odd that something someone experienced over 40 years ago in what had to be a very strange group of people colors their views and expectations today. It's long past time to move on.

Elmer, I was just trying to share my experiences as one who was on the cleaning end of the service.

Let me assure you completely that I have absolutely zero poisoned attitudes and I have absolutely zero feelings about it. My views are not colored and no, it does not follow that substance abuse is rampant in my circle of friends and family, and it is not a characterization of others. What absurd extrapolations you make!!

No, I don't consider invited friends to be invasive and I will answer the personal questions of my doctor but I don't want to find her standing in my bathroom.

It matters not, at all. It never did and it has even less than zero chance of ever mattering to anyone for the rest of eternity.

Moved on? There was nothing to "move on" from and I can assure you that I have not arrived at any "unfortunate destination of misunderstanding". I am not so frail of a person to let some the behavior of some unhappy housewives from 40 years ago influence my life or sink me into such imagined "unfortunate destinations". How dramatic!

Yeah, they were a strange group for sure. They were all friends so that tells you something..........birds of a feather, maybe? I think that these housewives were young educated women who were finding themselves on the edge of what was changing and yet they were still stuck in traditional roles. It was a bit of a thing happening at the time and the term of "mothers little helper" was more than a lyric of rock music. It was real for a lot of women at home.

It was my experience with cleaning other people's private spaces. I am quite certain that there are many tales to tell from those who see the inside of other peoples lives.. and this is my story.

Surely there are those who have written books about such. Give it a google and see how many tales are told. There are many, and they are interesting and amusing. This is my story. I told my story, but you added your own drama to it.

>> Believe me, most could really care less.

>> I think I've said my peace,

Oh, Elmer! You surprise and disappoint me! (Said in good natured teasing). :-). Of course, I'm quite sure that you know that it should be "couldn't" and "piece".

Just goes to show, even the grammar police have off duty time when they pay less attention to proper grammar.

It must have been the spell checker that did that. Or, maybe it was late in the evening. Or was it early in the morning? Or when I was watching TV or speaking on the phone? Or distracted by a young lady jogging by? Okay, I give up, GUILTY with no alibi I can claim with confidence.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Haha. I really was just teasing you. Of course you know the difference.

dallasannie, speaking of books, your experience just made "Valley of the Dolls" pop into my mind. Your experience was quite common back then.

suzieque, I'm nothing if not honest. I'll admit to thinking about it quickly at the time but laziness and haste led me to leave it without checking.

Tease away at any time, and thanks in advance for identifying your comments as being that, just as you did.

DH came home with a story that made me think of this thread. The ONE AND ONLY case of COVID in the county where the factory is was brought there by a lady who drives to Mpls. to clean houses. Her employer didn't bother to warn her they had it--or could have it--or were exposed..so she ended up bringing it home and infecting her entire family. You may feel at risk but remember so are the people you come in contact with.

Elmer, you could have blamed it on voice activated software. :)

I love using speech to text capabilities but every now and then I go back and find an error that makes me cringe.

I do short messages and input on my phone using typing by swiping but I too resort to speech to text for longer things.

aacy, am I the first or the only one to bring up Typhoid Mary? She was a real person. She worked for a few different families and she was an asymptomatic person who harbored the virus. Her name was Mary Mallon and she was a cook and she spread the virus to quite a few households. She, herself, lived to be 60something but a number of people along the way died because of her.

That is one thing to consider in this time, that you are inviting people into your home to get personal with your private places and things and you don't know but what they might have the virus. It is probably a bit different from hiring a plumber, for instance, who will come and only deal with your plumbing. They also run the risk of catching it from you. Not a good time to get too many non household members involved in your house cleaning.

I don't know how relevant Typhoid Mary is to think about but hopefully people understand there are loads of asymptomatic people around spreading the virus. That's why stay home when possible, wear a mask, and keep a good distance from others (>6 feet) is so important.

We're not inviting or allowing anyone in our house for now and we're not visiting anyone indoors. We had one urgent situation that required a tradesman inside our abode in late March but nothing since then. He wore a mask, gloves and booties and his presence passed uneventfully. I stayed outside.

I made sure to open more than the normal number of windows to have a good breeze during and after his visit and horizontal surfaces were cleaned after he left. Excessive? Maybe. But it made it comfortable. There are various degrees of attention to detail, everyone finds their comfort levels, but only one type of obliviousness/carelessness, as far as I can see.