I like having a clean and tidy home: a clean environment lifts your spirits and I think it probably makes you more productive.
I tend to have one clean and tidy session first thing in the morning, these days after breakfast and dicking about on Hive, and then I tend to chuck in another session around mid afternoon, when I’m flagging with intellectual work.
Overall I probably spend at least 30 minutes a day cleaning and tidying, and typically I aim to have one proper all round ‘super clean’ session once a week.
I have a pretty basic approach to cleaning - I’m not opposed to regular chemical cleaning products - if I’ve got an oven to degrease I’ll buy some ‘regular’ degreaser from Poundland, but I do try to minimise the use of chemicals as much as possible.
Other than that, I just believe it’s a matter of using some kind of detergent product, and then agitation and an appropriate amount of abrasion depending on the object of your attention.
I’m not opposed to a vacuum cleaner or ergonomic brushes or any cleaning tech that works! In general I know that money spent on quality cleaning aids can be a big time saver, my Dyson is one of my best ever purchases, 10 years ago, sadly not with me in Portugal.
My old flat shortly before I moved out.... carpets never got cleaned!
In pure financial terms it is rational for me to hire a cleaner…
I estimate that I spend about 7-8 hours a week cleaning (including laundry), let’s call it 8 hours on average as the occasional spring-cleaning session a couple of times a year will drag that up.
That’s potentially 8 hours a week of lost wages, a full working day, and at my hourly rate which is around £20 an hour, that means the hypothetical maximum opportunity cost of my choosing to do my own clearing is £160 a week, or £640 a month, which i could earn if I did NO cleaning,
That’s quite a sum of money, but I don’t unfortunately have an unlimited tolerance for skank, so some cleaning would be required.
In the UK It would cost me around £12-£15 an hour for a cleaner to come clean my house, and probably do a better job of it than I do, let’s call it £12 as I’m sure there’s going to be an increase in professional cleaners in coming months and years keeping the wages close to minimum.
So IF I were to hire a cleaner for 8 hours a week and work instead that means I’d be able to earn an additional £8 an hour for working extra in my usual paid-work, say for 33 hours a week rather than 25 hours.
Over the course a week, that would mean £48, or almost £200 additional a month if I hired a cleaner and did more intellectual work instead.
In fact, it would be be sightly more than that as I’d save some money on cleaning products.
However, in reality it is NOT rational.
In reality, if I did hire a cleaner, i’d be working for a marginal sum - only £8 an hour, which is a little derisory, AND because I’d be working more my productivity would suffer because of just doing the same old thing over and over again, and I’d have diminishing returns for the extra work - as it is I cherry pick the easy and/ or most lucrative stuff to do, and leave the more difficult or less fun stuff, if I worked more i’d have no choice but to do more ‘drudging’ which would be less well rewarded and not as rewarding.
Nothing like finding all yer single socks after a tidy session!
There’s also a certain meditative beneficiance to cleaning….
100% of my paid-work is intellectual and for the past 30 years I’ve found cleaning to be the perfect balancing activity to this.
I mostly enjoy cleaning and I’ve mostly found that 20 minutes or so in the morning or afternoon/ evening helps me clear my head, and if it’s a morning session it’s quite nice to be doing some natural moving around before a run. After dinner, doing the washing up and so on tends to wake me up a bit and helps prevent an evening slumped in front of the T.V.
In fairness I don’t always appreciate having to clean, and there have been some days and even weeks over the past 30 years where I’ve just let it all go, typically towards the end of term times when I was a teacher.
But one thing I have NEVER contemplated doing was getting in a professional cleaner to help out, not ever, not even though in ‘pure’ economics terms it’s financially rational.
In the broader real-world economic reality, it makes sense to do my own damn cleaning.
Of course, the more you can earn per hour compared to the cost of a cleaner, the more rational it becomes to hire one out!
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The other thing is that during those 8 hours, will you have work? That has to be factored in also. I do this on Hive where I do spend a lot of time for a bugger-all hourly rate, but - I wouldn't be working anywhere else anyway. The other thing is that I get to work my own hours and weekends if I choose. I do have two jobs already, so taking a third on a schedule would suck ass - but creating for coin feels good.
On the note of hiring a cleaner - In Finland, there is a tax rebate of about 50% on the labour.
I could find work to do, but I'd do it less efficiently. I also think there's something very calming about cleaning.
I don't really get why you'd have a tax rebate for hiring a cleaner!
It is a meditation of sort, plus practical.
it is seen as a trade and they try to encourage people to hire tradespeople, and still pay some tax :D
Ah a rebate, so you can't claim it all back, that makes a bit more sense!
Blimey. You really put me to shame. Our house is suffering badly due to lockdown. Normally we would have guests coming to visit regularly which would mean a big clean before they arrived.
Since it's only us locked in things have slipped somewhat. 😂
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I'm actually a lot worse now I'm in Portugal - I tend to keep things tidy but cleaning as taken a down turn!
When I get my land there's A LOT of tidying needs doing there.
I clean every day! I have a cleaning chore each day of the week (except Sunday) would you believe it! Still, I hire a cleaner once a month. Hahaha!
Sounds pretty balanced to me, and I have thought about the one chore a day thing but I'd never stick to it!
It is nice to have a super clean house so once a month is quite a nice way of doing it i think!
...or one major chore a week, such as:
Week 1- Clean out the refrigerator
Week 2- Dust all frames if the house
Week 3- Do al Baseboards
Week 4- Clean the utility room...etc!
I sort of do all the unusual cleaning on a rota basis - I get round everything every sixth months or so! As in behind the radiators and so on.
I actually put up an online survey once asking how often people physically move their fridges to clean behind them - i didn't get many responses, but based on about 10 votes, it's only once every 2-3 years!
Hahaha... that would be me! Moving stuff around is major-major!!
I actually meant cleaning chores you don't do every day.
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My wife is obsessed with cleaning and my two year old also. My wife tells me the same, it helps her put things in her mind. Some kind of cleaning meditation. Now it depends also how much you need to clean. :)
Thanks for sharing your math. Here also it depends on how much you earn an hour. If you would be at 100 than it would have been another perspective.
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Oh I hope she's not too obsessive - that can be annoying if you're not because they do tend to use it against you from time to time I've found.
And you're lucky if your kid cleans up after themselves!
She is ok, but the kid is obsessive :)))
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Ah yeah. Except the more stressed we get the more we clean haha. Tidy house tidy mind and all that. Luckily my husband isn't adverse to an OCD mental tidy up either... Saturday a.m, loud tunes and one hour? House is spotless. I always, always do washing on Thursday or Friday so I don't spend wkd doing it.. I cook as Jamie hangs it out. Jamie vacuums, I mop. Jamie does bathrooms, I make beds. These days we don't even need to tell each other what needs doing.. we just work in symbiosis.
He has been begging for a cleaner for years. I just think you have to tidy up before they come and it just gets messy again anyway. I also think sometimes you have to be at one with mess during term time. Not that we ever let it get that bad.
And our house is fairly small by Aussie standards, so ...
Funny, I literally did a huge tidy up then and sat down to HIVE.
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Sounds like you've got it all worked out - you'll spend more than hour in total per week though once you factor in laundry and washing up.
I've heard this about tidying up so things aren't messy for the cleaner, funny old world!
I know right - but seriously, would you leave your dirty undies on teh floor for someoone to tidy up? Standards!!!!
I'm doing my colour coding on the timetable now. Freaks me out. I do have a monday off in the two week cycle so I'm stoked!
Something I agree
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It's an opportunity to get your head clear - with cleaning, so why waste it by paying someone else!