Member Questions

We have a service come in every 2 weeks to clean our condo. It's 2 bedroom/1 bath, about 1000 square feet. Cost is $90. Well worth it for me. I probably should do some cleaning in between, but I've become pretty good at ignoring the filth that builds up by day 10.

Before outsourcing the cleaning and before kids, I tried the FlyLady.com system and found that no matter how I sliced and diced it, I had to do about 6 hours of cleaning and laundry a week, (cooking and food shopping were an additional 7-10 hours).

Now I have someone who comes biweekly. She cleans about 1500 sq ft -- the downstairs, the master bedroom and bathroom, and folds laundry for $80. (To save money I do the other bedrooms and kid's bathroom myself.) It takes her 4-5 hours alone, or 2.5 hours with a partner.

General tidying adds up to about an hour a week, although I let clutter accumulate in certain hotspots and have to spend an extra hour every now and then just to declutter the dining room table. In the family room, I don't pick up my toddler's toys every night -- it's messy but less work. I do about 5 loads of laundry every two weeks -- transfer from floor to hamper to washer to dryer to basket adds up to maybe 5-10 minutes per load, so let's stretch and say an hour.

My husband spends 30 minutes cooking dinner every night, and I spend about 15 minutes on kitchen cleanup. I spend about 15 minutes each on prep and cleanup for my toddler's breakfast and lunch. (I work 20 hr/wk from home.)

My husband spends 30 minutes mowing the lawn biweekly -- I spend about 10 minutes doing the edging. He often spends 3 hours doing major gardening projects (pruning, fixing irrigation, adding new bark, etc.).

Altogether that's about 4 hours cleaning and 3.5 hours food prep for me, 1-3 hours yard work and 3.5 hours cooking for my husband, and 5 hours for the cleaning person. I'm happy with the balance.