On my last day at my previous job, just before I signed on to Dethroner, I decided to give myself a little treat. I’d toiled at that gig for over two years, and between the Mrs. and myself, we never seemed to have time to get this place really clean.

We’re not utter slobs, but because she’s been a collector of various things for her whole life, we’re bogged down with tons of stuff. The Feng Shui of this joint is in peril as a result, and we can barely get through the maze of albums, shoes, horror movie memorabilia, weird furniture, and whatnots. We tidy, we re-arrange and organize, but we don’t have time to get the whole place as clean as we’d like on a regular basis. Plus, like Carol Channing said in McGraw-Hill’s Free To Be You And Me, “housework is just no fun.” I sure as hell don’t like to clean. But I do like living clean.

Being that I was going to be working from home full time from that point forward, I knew that I wanted to be in a clean environment on a daily basis, and so I decided to hire someone else to come in and scrub the joint down. A few minutes on the net provided me with a short list of services that would do the job; a few phone calls later I had made an appointment with Maid For You. My cleaner would arrive within two hours. Turned out to be a nice enough guy, but he talked a lot and seemed to spend too much time looking at our weird stuff and not enough time putting in the elbow grease. He spent four hours in my place before I had to leave for my night gig, and the results, at 175 bucks plus tip, were a bit disappointing.

Thus, here are a few things to note if you ever consider hiring a cleaning service:

• Lower your expectations. No service will ever get your apartment as shiny clean as something out of Home And Garden magazine unless it has the potential in the first place. Your cleaning service can provide one worker or a group of them and they’re not going to turn your home into The Ritz.

• Clean does not equal tidy. It’s not about the level of filth in your place, it’s about how good it can possibly look in the total absence of filth. If you have too much shit in your place, your home can be spotless but it’s still going to feel unkempt if you don’t have enough room to move around with ease, as we do. Unfortunately, our stuff (and by saying ‘our’, I mean ‘her’) stuff is both abundant and too cool to easily part with. We’ve both accepted that when we buy our new place—a plan that is already in action—we’re going to have to host one hell of a sidewalk sale.

• You get what you pay for if you go cheap. This one’s elementary, it just needs to be said. If you’re not paying someone at least $30 bucks an hour, you’re going to get someone who puts in a half-hearted effort. Similarly, unless you really aren’t that interested in having a your place cleaned up, don’t bother with the topless or nude cleaning services; they don’t really clean, you realize. But I also suspect that they don’t do other services either, if y’know what I mean.

Actually, I’d be interested to hear back from anyone who’s ever hired one of them before, I’m talking right out of my ass on this one.

• You’re going to have to clean for the maid. It won’t be because you don’t want some stranger to learn about your disgusting habits; if that’s a stumbling block, get over it. They’ve all seen enough dirty underwear hanging from chandeliers and the like, don’t sweat that stuff. But in order for your carpet to get vacuumed you will have to pick up all the junk lying around on top of it and put ‘em where they belong, particularly if their homes aren’t obvious.

• You don’t want sensitive material lying around. On our kitchen table we had utility bills, credit card statements, small valuables lying around and so forth. All had to go in a bag.

• Specialty chores are your own responsibility. There may be certain tasks you will probably want done in a very specific fashion that only you can understand and appreciate without becoming Joan Crawford and standing there issuing orders. For that stuff, just do it yourself and let them focus on the obvious tasks, like cleaning your oven; their methodology inevitably beats yours in those departments.

• Make sure your maid is bonded. This one should be a gimme. I don’t care how great the rates are with the independent cleaning lady, but if she doesn’t come with a glowing affidavit from someone you know and trust, stick with a larger company that performs a thorough screening, including background checks and referrals. Insist on a service that is insured aganst theft and damages, and only hires bonded workers. Not a lot would suck more than discovering weeks later that some of your possessions have taken a walk.

• Pitch in and help out. Sure, it’d be luxurious to sit back and watch TV while some slave does all the hard labor, and don’t think that I wasn’t entertaining this idea myself. However, when it comes down to it, you’ll get harder work out of your cleaner if you’re in the fray with him/her. Moreover, if they’re working on an hourly rate (see below), you’ll cut down on costs if you pick up some slack yourself.

• Why to hire on the hourly basis: As noted above, you can reduce your bill by taking some of the chores yourself, and the total job will be done faster as a result. Further, these folks often can make more money if they take on multiple jobs in the same day; it might reduce their quality a bit, but it’ll save you money when the bill comes.

• Why to hire for a flat fee: It’s like the question of a taxi or a car service; a taxi will drive faster to get on to the next rafe; a car service simply charges a rate based on distance, not time, and the ride is often smoother as a result. Similarly, if you hire your maid to complete a list of tasks without a time limit, the efficiency will be superior to that of one working on the clock.

• Get an estimate over the phone first. Almost all cleaning services will offer this, take them up on it. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and lots of them. Describe honestly the state of the union, sizes of rooms, tasks that are going to be more more challenging than usual (like dried-on cat puke in the carpet behind the couch, etc.), and services that you don’t need. For example, I didn’t want a stranger in our bedroom, and I didn’t want any cleaning of my office; though it is always the most lived-in room in the house, and certainly the most cluttered and in need of a cleaning, I was going to be working in there that day, and not even Kreskin could know where all the stuff in disarray might need to go. Noting that I only needed the kitchen, living room, and bathroom taken care of affected my estimate accordingly.

Lastly,

• Don’t be cheap on the tip. Even though a quick once-over revealed that my maid had cut corners and done a half-assed job here and there, I did also note that my stovetop was clean beyond the point I’ve ever gotten it to myself. The counters were immaculate, and even the inside of the microwave was shiny and spotless. Yes, things in the bathroom were put back in funny places. Yes, the kitchen floor never got mopped as per my instructions. He didn’t have time. I even had to re-vacuum the living room carpet after he’d left. Still, he did a good job where he applied himself, and fuck it, by tipping him graciously it minimized my discontent with where he dropped the ball. I walked out the door that night knowing I’d come home to a far cleaner home than I’d woken up to, and it was because some stranger did it all for me.