Well, “fired” is such a strong word, I wouldn’t really use it in this scenario as it wasn’t so much something that our cleaner did or not did.. it was more along the thought that ”We’re paying you $50 every two weeks or so to do something that we could and probably should be doing ourselves.”
A few years ago, my older roommate and I had a really good system in which every Saturday.. we’d have what we called “the power hour” and we’d spend one hour of cleaning usually every Saturday. He’d usually take the downstairs, and I’d do the upstairs. It worked out really well for us honestly.. I mean.. what’s an hour right?
Well, it seems that it’s a LOT, cuz we had to go and actually get someone else to do it for awhile! But not anymore! For the last few weeks we’ve been saving the$50 every two weeks (yes.. that’s $1300 a year!) and cleaning ourselves. Liz does an unreal job upstairs while I do the vacuuming and all kinds of other little things that sometimes get neglected.
Of course I was sitting here the day before the clean-fest, and I started thinking about how I’d like to be organize this.. and Liz does too, so we came up with a checklist for each room. What a great idea! Even when I’m hungover I could follow a list, eh? 
This way things don’t get missed.
Another great idea in which we are going to implement is to have certain cleaning duties done every few weeks, months, once a year, etc. Things like ‘dust the fans’ which doesn’t need to be done every week, or ‘clean the fridge’, etc..etc. Things that don’t need to be done every week, but should be done on a fairly regular basis. Again, things that are on a list, tend to be things that get done, so I’m all for that.
Another benefits of firing the maid is of course the $50 we’re saving. With that money.. we’re going out to eat! A sort of ”congratulations to you” type of deal. Also, I’m not sure how much cleaning any of you do out there.. but you put on quite a sweat when you clean! This is a good workout dammit!
So that’s our idea that we’re trying to implement. Obviously some weeks it gets delayed a bit, and some weeks we may do bare minimum.. but honestly, hiring a maid is kind of stupid when you have two very well abled bodies (three in our house) that have some time on the weekends to do it. Hell, just get up.. make a pot of coffee.. and before anything else.. do the cleaning.. then shower and enjoy, well.. a beer or two
If you ever come up with a list of duties let us know.
Hmm.. good call.. I’ll have to do that soon actually.
If you ever come up with a list of duties let us know.