Our Cleaning Confession


In honor of keeping it real here on the DIY Playbook, we have a BIG CONFESSION to make. Yes we are do-it-yourself bloggers but there is one thing in our own homes that we are not doing ourselvesย anymore and we feel the need to give you all the details. What DIY project have we recently hired out you ask?

Cleaning.Cleaning confession! We know we can't do it all. Here's why we hired a professional cleaning service.

Yep, at the start of 2017 we both hired cleaning ladies to come and clean our homes every other week. Why are we sharing this with you guys? Well, honestly we felt A LOT of guilt when we first decided to hire out. But we’ve since come around and realize how great of a decision it really was and continues to be at this stage in our lives. We also wanted to be transparent so you guys know that we don’t “do it all” like some of you have so kindly given us credit for over the years.

Our Relationship with CleaningCleaning wasn't hard for us, and we didn't hate it. But sometimes our schedules made it hard. A professional cleaning service was the right answer for us.

The ironic part of this entire situation is that we both don’t mind cleaning. In fact, sometimes we find it kind of satisfying when we look back and see the “before & after”. Is it the most fun thing we would choose to do in our free time? No. But it really did give us both a great deal of satisfaction to whip our homes into shape with a few hours of cleaning. For us, cleaning was therapeutic and a welcome time to brainstorm projects, ideas or just life topics while we scrubbed. Plus blaring tunes always made scrubbing toilets that much better.Cleaning essentials; lemon and lavender for that fresh, clean scent and dish soap and hand soap.

Cleaning was never a dreadful task to us, which was part of the reason we felt really bad handing it off to a professional. But we also realized it was still a chore that took up some of our preciousย free time.

Why Hire Out?Is hiring a cleaning service worth it?

As you guys know we both have full-time jobs on top of all of the work required to keep the DIY Playbook up & running. Having full-time jobs, and what feels like a full-time job here on the blog, means that our hours away from work are typically spent blogging, and the minimal “extra” time that is left over is divided among chores/exercise/errands/family/friends/husbands. Not exactly the best ratio… but part of price we pay for doing what we love.Cleaning supplies. We know cleaning isn't hard, it's part of life. Here's why we hired a cleaning service.

Spending a few hours cleaning each week isn’t a huge time commitment, but it was still time that we could have spent blogging, having fun with our husbands, squeezing in time to see our family/friends, or exercising. Time is so very precious these days and we realized that outsourcing some of the things on our to-do lists (like cleaning) was worth the cost if it meant we could give more time to our husbands, our families/friends, or even ourselves.

The CostLemon wedge and a dish sponge for cleaning.

Budget all of our expenses and you’ll rarely find us splurging on items just because. Plus when we each sat down to account for this new expense into our monthly budgets, we quickly realized that our time is well worth the monthly investment. Even if we had to cut a couple of nights of takeout a month in order to make room in the budget for a cleaning service expense, we were sold. So to us, paying a cleaning fee seemed like a worthwhile expense.

Is hiring a cleaning service worth it? Here's why we felt it was a good call for our household.It took us a bit of time to come to that conclusion (like several months of conversations + feelings of guilt), but once we did it was a great relief. We decided right then and there, and even promised each other, that we would not feel guilty about hiring some help and we started searching for local services to lend us a hand.

How do We Like it Now?

Bridget’s cleaning person comes every other Friday, while mine comes every other Tuesday. You cannot even understand the happiness that fills us when walking into our homes after a long day of work to find a clean home. It’s an amazing feeling!ย Don't feel bad about hiring a professional cleaning service! If you can afford it, it can be a great help!

Funny story, for the first few months we thought we might have hired the exact same person to clean our homes! Both of our ladies have the same, very unique name…so for awhile we thought it might be the same person!? But after further investigating we realized it’s not the same woman. But we certainly got a kick out of that. What are the chances?!

As full-time bloggers, it's hard to find a balance between work and family time. We know we can't do it all, so we hired a cleaning service for some help.As for the cost? It’s worth every single penny. We both use money we make blogging to pay for our cleaning services and we feel confident thatย it’s such a worthwhile expense. We now each have a few hours more each week to devote to the blog and we couldn’t be happier.

Hiring a cleaning service has help us make more time in our schedule for work, family, and enjoying life. But just because we have someone come every 2 weeks does not mean that we’ve given up cleaning all together. We’ll both do a light cleaning every once in a while when things start to look a little gross and we always make sure things are looking extra good before company comes over!

Is a Cleaning Service right for you?

We’re not saying you need to go hire a cleaning service for your home. But if you are living a very busy life, we encourage you to look for ways toย add more time into your schedule. We promise that removing some of the chores and tasks on your plate will be well worth the extra expense and will provide you the necessary time to focus on you!

Is this forever?Cleaning essentials; lavender and lemon, dish soap, hand soap, dish sponge and a cleaning bucket with dish gloves.

Do we think we’ll always hire out a professional to clean our homes? Probably not. Like we mentioned before we actually don’t mind cleaning our homes and if we had more time in our day, we’d still be cleaning them.

Maybe if our lives slow down someday we will get back to our routine of DIY cleaning. And we can’t really predict how much we will be willing to pay a cleaning service when we add kids to our homes. Before we decided to hire out, we read quite a few blog posts about it and learned that some moms don’t like paying cleaners because they feel like their house is a disaster soon after and then feel thatย they just wasted money on the service. That seems like a very real concern, but we’re not to that stage yet so we will have to wait and see.

We feel so much better getting this off of our chest and keeping it real with you guys! We don’t do it all and are more than happy to ask for help if it means that we can focus our time on our passion or the ones we love.

But enough about us, we want to hear from you! Do you use a cleaning service?ย Do you hire any other “job or chore” out to save time? We’d love to hear your experiences/advice!

Bridget&Casey


The Year of Casey

Hey there!

Iโ€™m Casey Finn, the voice behind The DIY Playbook. I’m a Chicago gal teaching you how to design, DIY, and maintain your home…by yourself! Learn more about me right here.