About Sonia

Our family hired Sonia to work with us three days a week to help with cleaning, laundry, and organizing. We are very busy professionals and needed dependable, ongoing household support. Pros: Sonia appears to be an honest and generally trustworthy person. She is good with pets and seems to genuinely enjoy animals. Cons: Unfortunately, we found Sonia to be very unreliable despite having a great deal of patience and giving her more chances than we should have. Over a four-month period, she was scheduled to work 54 days and did not show up 12 of those days—approximately 20% of the time. Absences were often communicated at the last minute, sometimes just minutes before her scheduled start time. Reasons included running out of gas, forgetting to charge her car, illness, car trouble, and family issues. Communication was also a significant challenge. We understood there might be a language barrier, but it proved more difficult than expected. When we asked her not to do certain tasks or requested changes, she would often say she understood or say “okay,” but the requests were frequently not followed. We used translation tools, but misunderstandings persisted. For example, after explaining that we needed to slow down laundry during heavy rains due to concerns about our septic system and drain field, she indicated she understood. When we followed up to ask if she knew what a septic system or drain field was, she said she did not. There is nothing wrong with not knowing, but we would have preferred more questions or clarification when instructions were unclear. We had initially hoped Sonia could help with organizing, but this did not work out. She struggled with organizing tasks, often mixing items together despite labeled systems already in place. Clothing that was organized by category was rehung randomly, which required us to redo the work afterward. Closet organizing attempts resulted in items being piled together rather than sorted. As a result, we eventually stopped asking her to organize and either handled those tasks ourselves or hired them out separately. We also found that her cleaning often felt rushed, with some areas skipped. Despite being paid hourly and encouraged to take the time needed for thorough work, repeated feedback and demonstrations on things like soap scum and mineral buildup did not lead to noticeable improvement. Overall: Sonia is a kind person, but reliability and consistency were ongoing issues. If you do not need someone you can depend on to consistently show up or are not particular about detailed or organized work, she may be a suitable fit. For families who require dependable scheduling and thorough, detail-oriented help, she was not a good match.

Leeann R.

2/25/2026