Spic and Span

Last night I finally got around to hiring a cleaning lady, or as they are known in Chinese, an ayi, pronounced “eye-ee,” and meaning “auntie.” She came recommended by my friend Richard, who has been using her for over two years and said she’s trustworthy and won’t steal my shit.

Last night Richard, his Chinese girlfriend, her brother, and the ayi came over.  I showed her around the place, and told her what I wanted done.  Basically she’ll clean the entire house twice a week, wash my clothes, do all the dishes, buy my groceries, and even cook for me.  And let me tell you, she was horrified by the state of my apartment.  Beijing is a very dry city, known for its summer dust storms, which I am so looking forward to.  When you combine that with the amount of pollution and general filth that there is in the air, things tend to get very dusty very quickly.

In America we have dust bunnies.  In China we have dust wolverines.  My apartment is full of the latter.

She’ll come Mondays and Thursdays, and we figure it’ll take her two or three hours a day to get done everything she needs to do.  The price?  ¥20 an hour, which is $2.70.  And that’s a good price for her, too, she was quite pleased that I agreed to it.  Initially she asked for a flat rate of ¥800 a month.  Richard and I did some quick math.  ¥800 is just over $100.  If she comes twice a week that’s eight times a month.  $100 divided by 8 is $12.50 a day.  That’s not an unfair wage for a top-to-bottom house cleaning, washing, and shopping.  We worked out a deal that for the first month I would pay her hourly plus her expenses (taxi to and from the store, etc.), and that if everything was satisfactory, after the first month we could come to an arrangement on a flat rate.  Considering that a decent maid in LA, who works for a bonded and insured company, will run you $60 an hour, $100 a month isn’t a bad deal.

She asked where my cleaning supplies were and I said that I really didn’t have any, so I gave her ¥500 and told her to go to Carrefours and buy anything she needed.  She’ll just leave me a list of her expenses, with receipts, and we’ll go from there. 

The great thing is that I’ll never see her.  I told her not to come before 10:00 am, by which time I’ll be long gone for work.  She’ll have her own key, can just let herself in, and when I get home at night it’s like the cleaning fairies have visited.

Ah, no more dishwashing.  Seriously, if there’s one thing I hate more than anything it’s doing the dishes, and if there’s one thing I hate more than that it’s doing the dishes by hand.

My wife and I could use a good maid, but unlike our neighbors we aren’t willing to cough up the extra $500+ month just to have one come in once a week to vacuum, dust and clean the bathrooms and kitchen.

Our solution is to run a shoe-free house, which keeps the tracked in dirt down to almost nothing, and for me to genetically ignore dust.

Cleaning really is a bitch.  I like a nice clean house, but it takes so much effort to keep it that way that it just doesn’t happen for me.  It doesn’t help that I don’t frequently entertain, so I have little outside reason to keep things in a reasonable state.

Hey, they have Carrefour over there? That is a French crocery chain store. I used to shop there when I worked in Brest.
Just Odd that that made it’s way into China of all places.

$60/hour in LA? Really? Must be one thing that’s cheaper in London, our cleaner we pay £8/hour ($16/hour), probably the best money I spend!

Well, you can get cheaper than that.  The illegals will work for peanuts, but if they break something or steal something then you’re screwed.  You don’t have any legal recourse.  That’s why I specified “bonded and insured,” meaning that the cleaning ladies are employees of a corporation, which is insured against damage or malfeasance by their employees.

To give one example, I hired a company once, and came home to find that the women had been poking around my computer.  This wasn’t just an accidental “I hit the keyboard while I was dusting” kinda thing, they had been sneaking around, looking at my stuff.  I called the company and complained, and was assured that they would be fired.  Whether or not they were actually fired I can’t say, but that cleaning company lost a customer that day, and you know how companies react when they lose customers because of the actions of their employees.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Ours came recommended by word of mouth; but you do never know.