Marti L.

I'm not one to write reviews, especially negative ones, but I feel obligated to share my experience with Marti. I sent her a message about cleaning my house. I have an 11 month old little boy, had company coming to visit, and wanted to make sure that despite chasing my son around 24/7 I had a clean house for my guests. Marti advertises that she cleans for $10-$15 an hour. We scheduled a quick walk through so she knew what she was coming into and I knew what it would cost me. I actually pride myself on keeping my home pretty clean and picked up...I just have a hard time getting to the nitty gritty (dusting baseboards and blinds, scrubbing down the bathrooms, etc.). My home is 2100 sq ft and I can tell you that it takes me a few hours of uninterrupted time to get it sparkling clean. Marti did the walk through and quoted me $100. This was quite a bit more than I had calculated (4 hrs, being generous here, at $15 comes out to be $60) so I asked what it would cost if she did not clean the 3 bedrooms, to which she dropped the price to $75. I should have just backed out then, but I already had set in my mind that I was not going to be rushing around, spending every spare second that my son is napping trying to clean the house so I agreed to the $75. She showed up early to clean, which was very nice, because I needed to leave shortly after the time we had scheduled her to show up. She began cleaning and I got ready and left. She sent me a text exactly 3 hours after starting and said she was finished. Perfect, I was so excited to come home to a nice, clean home. She informed me that she didn't have time to vacuum the sofa, which I thought was a little weird since she never said that it was a strict limit of 3 hours for $75, but if that's the only thing that wasn't done I didn't mind. I got home and at first glance the house looked pretty good. HOWEVER, my husband showered that evening and proceeded to give me a hard time that I had payed for a cleaning lady and there was still remnants of his shower gel on the shower wall when he got in. I was a little bummed. It's teal shower gel, and completely noticeable, so I don't feel like it's easy to miss, but whatever. I took the ridicule and moved on. UNTIL I walked in the front living room (which we don't use at all) to look for something. I have yet to get our house fully furnished and decorated so there are only a few things in the living room, one of which is a book shelf. I proceeded the the book shelf to try to find the paper I was looking for, to find a dusty bookshelf. You could tell a couple of the shelves had been swiped with a cloth, but the shelf was hardly dusted. I became a little skeptical and checked a few other areas only to find that she had not cleaned the base of either toilet on the side closest to the wall (the side you don't see right away when you walk into the bathroom) among other things that were completely overlooked. These are not things that should be overlooked when you are paying someone $25/hr to CLEAN your house. I took pictures and sent them to her so she could see. She said she was sorry she missed those things but she did her best and she stood by her work. After a little back and forth about how I understand things get missed, but not THAT many things, and her saying that she did what she could in the time (even though she never told me she would only clean for 3 hours), she finally said she would send me $15 to offset some of the things she missed. It's been over 2 weeks and I never received any $$. I've learned my lesson and will clean my house myself in the future, but I wanted to take the time to warn you that if you are thinking of paying someone to clean your house....look elsewhere! : )