As a smart time manager you may well already have a housekeeper, or if not, you may be seriously considering hiring one. Not only will hiring an experienced housekeeper free up hours of your time to get other stuff done, like growing your business, but there is simply nothing better than coming home to a beautifully tidy and clean house. Nothing.
Housekeepers aren’t cleaners. Domestic cleaners will expect your house to be tidy and ready to clean, and they will perform that clean for you – as one cleaner once said to me I am not a tidyerupperer, I am a cleaner. Ok, lesson learnt. A cleaner is perfect if all you need is for someone to come and spend a few hours a week basically cleaning your home.
A housekeeper is so much more. A housekeeper will not only clean your home, but will provide a wide variety of additional extras such as doing the laundry, changing the linen, ironing, window washing, food preparation, shopping, putting away dishes, shoes, clothes, books and toys and more.
Here are my top tips for engaging a new housekeeper:
- Like recruiting for any role, look for experience and strong references.
- Agree with your housekeeper what you want them to do on a regular basis, and show them eg., clean the bathrooms, kitchen, vacuum and mop the floors, a weekly shop, some food preparation and then what you want them to do on alternative weeks or once a month eg., clean the oven, reorganise the laundry cupboard, clean out the fridge and pantry and so on.
- Talk to your housekeeper about the products they will use – make sure you have agreed on any special cleaning requirements such as no chemical products on your timber floors.
- Agree who will provide the cleaning equipment – if it’s you, then show your housekeeper how to work the vacuum (including how to empty it); where the mop, duster & cleaning cloths are kept.
- Show your housekeeper where everything is and where everything belongs – from your preferred sheets and towels, to the food stuff, to what to do with the piles of your stuff which have magically accumulated since last week.
- Discuss any areas or items which you don’t want the housekeeper to access.
- Have a regular catch up to make sure both you and the housekeeper are happy with how the employment arrangement and performance are going.
Housekeepers work either on an hourly rate or on an agreed annual rate. Depending on the duties and the housekeeper’s level of experience, expect to pay around $25 per hour.
Would you prefer a cleaner or a housekeeper?
Time Stylers works with professional women who are very clever when it comes to managing their business or career, but who aren’t using their smarts on the home front. Time Stylers has a reputation for helping our clients to find 30 guilt-free hours a month. What would you do with an extra 30 hours?
Time Stylers: www.timestylers.com.au
BaM: www.babysittersandmore.com.au
