Hacker News Reader

Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

Hire an independent immigrant maid service. It sounds... I don't know, evil or something, but corporate maid services are terrible while independent hard-working low-skill immigrants (typically middle-aged women) have been awesome for me.

I pay $25/hr and my house cleaner comes twice per week and vaccuums, does laundry, takes out all the trash, picks up everything, etc. Literally anything you can think of.

View on HN

Make that into an app, and I'll be your first customer. It's the convenience factor that bothers me. How do you differentiate a good housekeeper from someone who's going to steal my nutella? (I don't keep much of value in the house.)

Ask your neighbours. Madness, I know.

No question that this needs to be done. The problem is mobilizing said labor force to accept technology. My maid barely checks her email once per week.

The depression of wages and lack of adopting technology/communication go hand in hand, to no surprise of anyone here.

I just met her through a moving service when I hired people to pack up and move my belongings when I bought a new house. Actually need to put boots on the ground for this kind of thing.

SMS-based maybe? Pretty much everybody's got a cell phone.

$25/hour seems astonishingly high for an independent maid service. You should be able to find similarly high quality maids for $10-15/hr, or fixed rates that are far below $25/hr ($25-50 per cleaning).

Trust is a big factor. I can run errands with her in the house without fearing for something being stolen or I can leave my toddler with her and she's great. $25/hr isn't that much at all considering she scrubs floors and does very detailed work that the major places won't do (for even more money, I might add).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com