Housekeeping costs - Toronto - review of mastermaid.ca article

This blog article is a review of Toronto's housekeeping cost information provided by mastermaid.ca. .

First of all, as a cleaner, I object to the term maid. I am a cleaner, not a beautiful maid or maiden. But, I suppose if I'm getting paid for cleaning, they can call me whatever they want. This is a very gendered line of work, unfortunately for me.

I take offense at Mastermaid first explaining that size and dirtiness at initial visit will determine the cost of a cleaning and then going on to provide a quoted rate of $169 + HST to clean a 2 bedroom house. How do you know how big those bedrooms are? Maybe they are coated in shit and blood? You understand that they will come to your home, and say, "oh well $169 + tax is the REGULAR price, you have an IRREGULAR situation. C'mon now. Best not to provide specific prices at all if that's the situation. When you look at their standard cleaning service, (https://mastermaid.ca/house-cleaning-services-toronto/) its basically about getting all the dust off the surfaces. That's a good reference point actually nice job.

As they explain the labour rates, they start writing that large companies charge $60-100/hr as their labour rate. Uh huh. So, then we should assume that Mastermaid charges $60/hr, being a larger company. So, $60/hr and a two bedroom house for $170, so 2 people for about 1.5 hr of labour time. Now, as a flat rate quoter myself, I like to quote work for 2 hr and be out of there in 1 hr 45 minutes to pad my wallet a bit, tip out my employees and so forth. A large business like this will do something similar. Now, they say themselves, that an independent housekeeper will work at $20-30/hr. So, now you know their labour rate, $25/hr. So, the company takes $35/hr for basically booking the job and overseeing operations.

Now, as a customer, ask yourself, would you rather hire a cleaner, without insurance (tell them where the fragile stuff is in your house and tell them to stay away from it or be super careful around it), without guarantees of competence (ask for references), and without a background check (though to be honest, you can always ask and even pay for one to be done, they're only about $70) and let them work for $25/hr or hire these guys at $60/hr to hire the same cleaner? Please, save yourself some money and hire an independent cleaning service. You can buy the same eco-friendly stuff to clean your bathroom for a few bucks and let them use it.

If you ask about my cleaning service, my overhead rate at the moment is $42/hr and I pay my employee/helper $25/hr. So, $67/hr (and this will come down in the winter) for 2 people working. A quote for cleaning is done after seeing the work. There is no standard room. Some kitchens are clean, tiny, and require a dust wipe, others are full of grease, stains, and a million pots and pans that need to be cleaned. So, let me see what needs cleaning, I will provide a quote based on labour time, add a $25 commute fee and whatever materials fee there is and that becomes your flat rate.