I've always been extremely reluctant to hire cleaning services ever since I read Barbara Ehrenreich…read moreon the amount paid to cleaners out of the amount paid to services. I have hired independent cleaners, but their work was often irregular and so were their hours and reliability. This is why I was so glad to see Vida Verde.
The pricing is extremely reasonable, and the rates are quoted immediately, with adjustments to be made if necessary given the layout of your home. (There are assumptions about the size when you say X # bedrooms and X # baths. I'm sure if I had a huge layout that happened to have X # bedrooms and X # baths, we'd be renegotiating.) But then they make a quote and stick to it for weekly, biweekly and monthly cleanings.
There are add-on fees at reasonable rates for things -- $20 to clean out a fridge, $5 to strip and make up a bed, $10 to do a load of laundry, things like that. It makes it easier to both see what is and isn't going to be done and easier to specify which extras you'd like and how much more you should pay. (Certainly when I've hired cleaners in the past, I've asked for these things, and I've given them more money that week, but it was always a nebulous, well, how much is stripping and making a bed worth? What about if I've stripped the bed and the sheets are already sitting at the foot of it, but I wanted to let the mattress air out for a couple of hours?)
Valdirene has been coming to our home now for five months. She's reliable, neat and friendly. Her work is excellent. Clearly, the co-op chooses good cleaners and knows how to protect their name and ensure that their cleaners are good at their jobs and can keep referrals coming in and conversely the members of the co-op benefit by doing good work -- a clear indicator that this is, in many ways, an actual cooperative.
A first cleaning may involve some toxic chemicals. They freely admit this. That's okay. Most of us do not use Seventh Generation everything all the time anyway. (I'm as Cantabrigian as they come, and even I freely admit to having Formula 409 in my house.) However, afterwards, they come equipped with their own green, non-toxic cleaning supplies, which is not only better for clients but better for them -- I hate to think of what working with toxic stuff all day does to workers. I have not seen any compromise in cleanliness, so the supplies they're mixing up work.
On the whole, I find Vida Verde excellent at what they do, I'm satisfied that they seem to be a working cooperative, I don't feel any twangs of my overly hippie conscience at endorsing them, and I hope that they are empowering workers as much as they seem to be and that other co-ops like them spring up among other communities that also have large numbers of domestic workers, to give them an alternative to exploitation by corporate services.