Housekeeping, house cleaning, and maid service, which are you, and what’s the difference between them? A lot of homeowners can get confused by all of the different names that cleaners use, so today we’re talking about how to tell the difference between them!
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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.
Housekeeping House Cleaning or Maid Service?
Housekeeping, house cleaning, or maid service, which is it? Today somebody called in and asked this question, “How do I choose between hiring a housekeeper, a house cleaning service, or a maid service? Is there a difference?” All right, there are interchangeable names, and as a house cleaning company, I recommend that you use all of them because you will attract buyers with all of those different keywords.
So from a house cleaning company, use them all on your website and in your SEO and all that stuff. But from a consumer standpoint, here’s the breakdown of what it really means.
What is Housekeeping?
The housekeeping term is used for the hospitality industry and most hotels. So you go to a hotel and the housekeeping staff is going to have the carts that come up and down the hallways. They’re going to freshen up your towels every day, they’re going to make the beds. They’re going to restock what’s in the room. That’s the housekeeping term and the housekeeping staff.
For homes, we don’t normally have that. It is possible that you have that, but a house cleaner would provide that service, and it’s called a Mommy’s Helper package. So it’s not really considered housekeeping if you have a housekeeper come to your house, but the Mommy’s Helper package does the exact same stuff. They make your bed, they wash your dishes, they wipe up everything. They refresh your towels, they get your house ready to go again so when you come home, the house has a facelift, right? So that is the process there.
Maid Services are Mainly Franchised Companies
House cleaning is a little bit different from maid service. Now, maid service. We traditionally toss that term to the franchised companies who have a set series of tasks that are usually on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. They have a series of things that they do and they come to your house and they do the same series of things every single time. They have a uniformed team. And they might send the same people or they might send different people at every turn. So it’s kind of a house cleaning program from a franchise.
House Cleaners are Mostly Independents
House cleaning is independent for the most part. Now, maids also do house cleaning, but the term for house cleaning is kind of independent. They’re smaller companies and they’ve got a lot more flexibility. So they can do spring cleaning and deep cleaning, and they can do special projects.
So it’s going to be your daily chores if you hire them for the Mommy’s Helper package. They do weekly, biweekly and monthly chores, which is the stuff that the maid service does. And what’s different from the house cleaners from the other two, house cleaners, we train to do special projects.
So for example, in Savvy Cleaner, we have what’s called an upsell and special projects course that we take them through. And we show them all the different stuff that we are capable of doing that falls under our insurance and our bonding so that we can do these services inside your home.
What is a Save Me Package?
Now, for example, there’s a Save me package. The Save Me package is for homeowners who are not good at remembering on schedule stuff that needs to be done in their house. So for example, the little flapper in the back of your toilet erodes after a period of time. And so when you go to flush it, the flush keeps running and running. It’s called ghost flushing, and it’s because that little flapper valve has eroded. It needs to be replaced every year or so, every year and a half.
And so as part of our Save Me package, we have a house cleaner who’s trained to replace that for you. Instead of calling a plumber in at $160 to show up, you have a house cleaner that’s already there. It’s part of a maintenance package that you’ve paid for. They’re going to do that while they’re already inside your home.
House Cleaners Can Do Things Instead of You Hiring Other People
Another thing that they do is replace the air filters for your air conditioning vents. Now, instead of hiring an HVAC guy to come in and do just that. Your house cleaner already has the specs of all of the different filters inside your house. They’re already inside your house on this day. They’ll just bring the filters and they’ll replace all the filters for you so you don’t have to remember. It’s part of the Save Me package.
Now, if you open your refrigerator door and there is a box of baking soda in there that helps dissolve the odors in your fridge, you probably forget to replace it every 30 days, right? I know a lot of people do. And so what happens is they put that on their schedule, and when they come back every other time. They’re going to replace all the baking sodas that you’re using as odor eliminators inside your home. They will do that as part of the Save Me package.
It’s part of what they do. So they’re qualified to do all these weird little projects that you’re not going to hire a specific handyman to do.
House Cleaners Can Do Housekeeping and Special Projects
So, the term house cleaning is, yes, they do housekeeping and they also do maid service. But they also do a series of special projects that are not part of a deep clean, they’re not part of maintenance clean. They’re a trained professional in a certain area that’s going to serve a different part of your home that is often neglected. That’s the breakdown in how the different terms work, but a house cleaner kind of does all of those.
So if you’re in the business, I recommend you use them all for SEO and attract people to you. But if you are the consumer and you are having somebody come into your home, my suggestion to you is to be very clear about what it is you need.
Do you need a housekeeping service? Do you need the Mommy’s Helper package, or are you looking for a house cleaner who will do all of these other things? Or are you looking for a maid service that’s going to come in and do the routine stuff every other week? The clearer you are about what it is you need, the easier it will be for you to hire the right person when they come.
Resources
Decluttering at the Speed of Life – https://amzn.to/3p8ZQYg
How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind – https://amzn.to/3c5ZJYo
Cluttered Mess to Organized Success Workbook – https://amzn.to/3cb6qbD
Let It Go: Downsizing Your Way to a Richer, Happier Life – https://amzn.to/3yT1rWQ
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life – https://amzn.to/3c5ZVH6
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