Cleaning in New York

September 3, 2008 8:11 AM

Please recommend/warn me about cleaning services and independent housekeepers in New York City

I need your recommendations and warnings about cleaning companies or persons you have hired before. (Manhattan here.)

Please be as specific as possible! I'm not looking to learn more about the inner workings of the housekeeping industry. I want to hire a person or company with the help of your personal review about their performance. What's the company you hired or the name of the person? Did they clean under the bed? Did they leave the shower mat in place and just cleaned around it? Did they meet your expectations or were not as thorough as you wished? How much did you pay, and was it worth it?

If you're not comfortable posting the phone number of an independent housekeeper, please e-mail it to me. Really, I want to call them.

(I have read the previous threads on housekeeping and cleaning services. I know about big cleaning companies underpaying their employees. I know they are more interested in making stuff look clean (smear furniture polish, rearrange objects) as opposed to actually cleaning everything with real products down to every corner. I know I should look for independent housekeepers because they'll get all the money I pay for the service and I can have more control over what and how things get done - they'll listen to me rather than their management's instructions on how to clean my house. I know that if I have more serious problems (stuff getting broken, lost, stolen) I'm better off dealing with an established company rather than a person. That's not really what my question is about, as I have considered all of this and I'm up for trying either kind of service. I want to know about specific companies/persons and how they performed.)

posted by AnyGuelmann to home & garden (5 comments total)

mefimail me your neighborhood and if it's one she's willing to travel to, i'll send you the name of my super awesome cleaning lady.
posted by lia at 9:10 AM on September 3, 2008

In How to be Invisible, JJ Luna recommends calling your local 7DA or JW congretation and inquiring about about whether any of the congregation works in housekeeping.

I tried it, found my current housekeeper that way.
posted by unixrat at 9:16 AM on September 3, 2008

Unixrat: Seventh-day Adventist or Jehovah's Witness? Why on earth would one call those particular congregations for housekeeping? That's utterly bizarre.
posted by tejolote at 11:02 AM on September 3, 2008

Not what you're asking for, but you didn't indicate that you've already heard of the women-run, women-owned, eco-friendly housecleaning cooperative, "We Can Do It!" I haven't used them, but I intend to. I have used Zen Home Cleaning a few times after hearing about them on this apartmenttherapy thread and they have been fine, but generally mixed enough that I don't feel any loyalty or particular urge to recommend them more strongly than that.

(The last time we used Zen, they ended up extending an initial 4-hour appointment to something like 9 or 12 hours, which gave us an expectation of coming back [from vacation] to a phenomenally clean place. Instead it looked like they'd done, if anything, a little less than the previous time. But our house did certainly start out messier that time than the times before, so I don't feel too raw about it, other than the whole looking-elsewhere thing. The work they do is good).

It looks like (from the Google Books result) the Jehovah's Witness thing is about finding someone who is strongly, eternal-hellfire-ly averse to stealing or being dishonest, and part of a community that reinforces that. A little weird to me too, but the book says it's well-known.
posted by xueexueg at 1:57 PM on September 3, 2008

Ask your super who cleans for other apartments in the building. He'll know, and you can take the fact that your neighbors are happy with her as a reference. Also, you won't have to get her a front-door key because she'll already have one.
posted by jillsy_sloper at 10:09 PM on September 3, 2008