What should you charge for light housekeeping? What is light housekeeping, and how do you clarify expectations with your customer? Sometimes customers can be vague about what they want you to do, so making sure you’re both clear on what the job is and how much is being paid is super important. This is how that process works!
Listen: What Should I Charge for Light Housekeeping?
Watch: What Should I Charge for Light Housekeeping?
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
How Do You Charge for Light Housekeeping?
How do you charge for light housekeeping? Now, someone wrote in, and here’s what they asked. “I’m just wondering how much I should charge for a two-bedroom home for light housework. Basically, they said sweep and mop, dishes, make the bed and wipe everything down. Just kind of spruce it and make it look nice. I’m just wondering how much I should charge them so that I’m not overdoing it. I’m new at this too, by the way.”
What is Light Housekeeping?
What do you charge for light housekeeping? I want to stop for just a second and say I love the question, because what is light housekeeping? Now, you said to make the beds and wipe down the counters and do some spruce up of the house. That’s a really vague question about how you are going to clean somebody’s house.
Because if you clean it and it’s different from what they’re expecting, both of you are going to be sadly disappointed. So if you go in and you spruce up their house, that’s a daily chore series that you’re going to do for one day. And then, what you’re going to come back in two weeks and do it again?
Because those need to be done every single day. We need to do laundry every day and dishes every day. Those counters need all the crumbs wiped up every single day, so we don’t get mice and ants in our house, right? And who’s going to make the beds? That needs to be done every day as well.
I Would Recommend a Mommy’s Helper Package
So instead of doing light housekeeping every couple of weeks, my recommendation is that you offer a mommy’s helper package, which has you come in once a day. And you come in once a day and you do light housekeeping once a day. And for that, we charge starting out at about $50 a day. And so, what happens is they’re going to be gone.
And while they’re gone for work, you zip in and you rotate the laundry, you fold yesterday’s laundry, put the new load of laundry in. And before you leave, you’ll take out the wash and put it in the dryer, turn the dryer on before you leave. Tomorrow when you come back, you’ll fold that load of laundry. So, the laundry is always in rotation.
You’ll empty the dishwasher and put all the dishes away. And you’ll put the new dishes that are in the sink inside the dishwasher and you’ll start a load of dishes. And you’ll make the beds and you’ll spruce up the house. Then you’ll do a quick tidy of the house and make everything nice.
You Can Offer This Package to Don’t Have Time to Clean Themselves
Light housekeeping, right? It is not cleaning. It’s called the mommy’s helper package. And we teach you how to do this at savvy cleaner training. But my point is this. There’s a light housekeeping package that can be offered to families who do not have time to do the light housekeeping themself. You want to clean up everything and pick up the toys and pick up the clothes before the house cleaner comes to actually scour out the toilets and sweep, mop the floors, and all that stuff. Because those are daily or weekly chores.
The pickup of the house and the sweeping of the floors, that’s a daily chore. But the scouring out of the tub and the bathtub and the toilet and all that stuff, those are weekly or bi-weekly chores. So if you have a regular cleaning company that’s coming in, you want to come in first and do all the other stuff so that it is ready for the house cleaner to come. They’re not going to be able to vacuum the floors if their stuff’s strewn all about, right?
Clarify With the Homeowner What They Need
So, I would clarify with the homeowner exactly what they need. Because it’s not going to be very helpful to them if you zip in one day every two weeks and you do one day of daily chores. That’s really not very helpful except it will look super nice for that one day that you came.
Resources
Stop Being Disrespectful by Low-balling Your Fees: A Guide to Pricing Your Service-based Business Within Industry Standards – https://Amzn.To/30v1fvo
Be the Go-to: How to Own Your Competitive Market, Charge More, and Have Customers Love You for It – https://Amzn.To/3dpciaz
Handbook on the Psychology of Pricing: 100+ Effects on Persuasion and Influence Every Entrepreneur, Marketer and Pricing Manager Needs to Know – https://Amzn.To/37mnsq2
What They Don’t Teach You in Business School: Real-world Sales and Service Skills You Need to Win and Wow Clients! – https://Amzn.To/2xni3d6
Pricing for Profit: How to Command Higher Prices for Your Products and Services – https://Amzn.To/2uxsakp
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