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Note: I actually did end up canceling our maid service after choosing for a speedier student loan payoff (see this post for the deets on why!). However, I still think it’s important to talk about this, hence today’s post.  

I have a big, fat confession for y’all today: I hired a Maid service.

Before you come at me with the frugal torches and pitchforks, let me explain.

I know how it sounds. In fact, I put off hiring a maid service just because I knew it wouldn’t sit right with a lot of folks. After all, I write about cutting costs. What’s more luxurious and non-essential than paying other people to clean your house?

For cripe’s sake, I sewed my own handkerchiefs to save $20 a year on Kleenex. $200 a month for a Cleaning service sounds outrageous.

I get it. I know. Just hear me out.

Let me be the first to say that Mr. Picky Pincher and I are frugal by choice. People who are frugal out of necessity wouldn’t bother with something as ridiculous as a maid. Heck, people who are frugal by choice don’t do this, either. Not everyone is going to want to spend money on this, let alone have the ability to spend money on this. We’re grateful and privileged to have this option.

We define frugality as putting your money to its best and highest use. That means spending less on things that don’t matter to us, like fancy cars or houses, and spending it on things that we value.

And that leads into why I hired a maid service.

Why did you hire a maid???

I have to be honest with y’all. Mr. Picky Pincher and I have jokingly nicknamed 2018 “The Year of Grit.”

On Mr. Picky Pincher’s side, he switched to a fantastic, new job. It was the right move for him and he’s learning so much; he really likes this new company. However, the hours and workload are pretty hefty. As in, 12-hour days hefty. This means hubs is absolutely exhausted when he comes home in the evening. He doesn’t have the energy to do menial tasks like cooking and cleaning. He has just a few precious hours when he’s physically at home, and it’s soul-draining to spend them doing chores. It would mean he’s working every second that he’s awake, and that’s a recipe for burnout and depression.

Since I work from home and have an 8-hour workday, that means I need to do cooking and cleaning to keep things running. I’m the one who’s physically at the house, so it just makes the most sense.

The tough bit is my freelancing. I’ve been growing my freelancing business tremendously this year. I’m so, so grateful that it’s grown to where I can earn $3,000+ a month on the side. However, I still have to put 15 – 20 hours a week into this business. I guess it’s more accurate to say that I also have 12-hour workdays because of this, but I digress.

True, freelancing is something I’ve chosen to do. But I’m not keen to slow down any time soon, particularly because I plan to jump into doing it full time by 2019.

That means I put in a full day of work, pause to cook dinner and clean, and then spend my evenings freelancing. For a few months there, I felt like I was working nonstop, with zero time to enjoy myself. I admit I fell into a deep funk and it was hard to pull myself up.

I took a hard look at my most time-consuming tasks and brainstormed how they could be automated. I signed up for inbox consolidation (I used Unroll.me and it’s free). I bought a Roomba (on sale, of course) to cut down on daily sweeping. Some days I even used paper plates to avoid doing dishes.

Even then, it felt like our house was a disaster. The toilets, sinks, bathtubs, kitchen counters, and floors were caked in grime. Well, it felt like it to me, at least. I’m a neat freak and a tidy home is very important to me. And when you work from home like I do, it’s extra important to keep everything clean so you can focus.

I finally caved one day and texted Mr. Picky Pincher, “…What would you say if I hired a maid?”

He was behind the decision 100%, so I priced out local maid services.

I chose Maid Brigade because I liked their pricing, green cleaning products, and employee screening process. And their rhyming name was the cherry on top. P.S. No, they didn’t pay me to write about them!

I decided to sign up for biweekly cleanings. Our house wasn’t dirty enough to justify a weekly cleaning, and this helped me keep the costs reasonable. A week after signing up, a team of people scrubbed my house literally from top to bottom.

The benefits of a maid service

The maids do way more than I thought they would, to be honest. During every visit they:

• Make the beds
• Wipe EVERYTHING (counters, desks, windowsills, baseboards)
• Sweep
• Mop
• Scrub the showers, tubs, and toilets
• Dust shelves
• Vacuum
• Wipe mirrors
• Clean kitchen appliances, including the inside of the microwave
• Scrub our disgusting stove

I damn near cried the first time they cleaned the home. I don’t think this place has been so clean … like, ever. And it wasn’t just me, either. Mr. Picky Pincher came home and as soon as he walked in, he shrieked, “IT’S SO CLEAN!”

The huge benefit to the maid service is that they do the annoying, deep cleaning tasks that I hate and that stress me out. I can’t tell you how long I delay scrubbing the toilets, which needs to be done at least twice a month with our hard water. And the baseboards? Ha! Those haven’t been cleaned since I painted them.

Thanks to hiring this service, I got tons of my time back. I also feel happier in my home and significantly less stressed. I know I’m not a failure, but when the home is dirty, I can’t help but feel like I’m letting people down. Getting help with the cleaning helps me feel happier and gives me more time to actually relax.

The math

Sure, maids make me feel happier. Fancy cars and fancy houses make people feel happy, too. But aren’t they all just money-sucking luxuries that delay debt payoff?

Let’s do a little math to see the true impact of hiring maid service.

First things first: I pay for the maids with my freelance earnings. I cover the maid costs with freelancing because they enable me to have more earning power, along with a spotless house.

In fact, I’ve broken down the numbers. It costs $100 for one cleaning session, for a total of $200 a month. For $100 they send not one, but three skilled cleaners to my home. In one hour, these three people tackle an incredible amount of tasks with their specialized equipment and training.

In June 2018, I earned over $3,000 freelancing, giving me an hourly rate of $80. It would take me at least three hours to replicate the efforts of Maid Brigade. Actually, it would take longer, because I lack the equipment and skill, but let’s just say it takes me three hours. In three hours I can earn $240 in freelance income.

That’s a difference of $140 saved when I hire people to clean our house. Of course, that’s assuming I would actually spend that time cleaning (and I would have), which means it makes sense in this situation. If, say, I weren’t such a clean freak, I don’t think maids would make sense.

The bottom line

I know, I know. Hiring a maid service isn’t the most cost-saving thing in the world. However, it’s freed up my time, which is a resource more precious than money. It’s enabled me to focus more on my business and increase my earning potential.

In fact, if I didn’t freelance, it wouldn’t make sense for us to hire a maid. But because of how our lives are at the moment, it works out. I’ll reevaluate the maid service once I switch to full-time freelancing and have just one job. I’m hoping this will be a temporary way to help me retain some shreds of sanity in what’s shaping up to be an incredibly busy year. #YearOfGrit, friends.

We want to know: When have you prioritized saving time over saving money?

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