If you're paying cash/under the table, then maybe. But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. If you're not under the table, you're paying payroll taxes, probably paying for a payroll service, etc. so you're talking $2000+. At best you can maybe stay under $20k a year.

When you really look at the economics of it, a robot that never gets sick/doesn't require payroll/etc. makes a lot more sense.

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midnightclubbed 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This comment seems insane to me. Like at $50 an hour thats 30 hours a month, or 8 hoursish a week. How dirty or huge is the house? And $50 an hour is way over what most hourly degree edgucated workers earn so definitely not exploitation.

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what 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I pay $40/h for 4 hours once a month. If the wife had her way, it would be weekly.

	▲	devilbunny an hour ago \| parent [-]
		But presumably would not be for four hours a week, since they would do more maintenance-like cleaning. Once a month, yeah, it’s going to take that long.

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dh2022 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Who spends new-car money to clean their homes? Maybe ultra high net worth individuals? I know people with 8 figures net worth who spend a fraction of that money for cleaning their homes.

	▲	Danox 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		None...

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RussianCow 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative.

Sorry, what? Unless you're doing a deep clean of your house twice a week or you live in a particularly HCOL area, those numbers don't add up. You shouldn't be spending more than $1k/month on household chores, and even that seems high.

Source: A client of ours runs a "personal help" service (mostly focused on household tasks like laundry, tidying, organizing, etc as opposed to deep cleaning) so I have a lot of data on this. And they're a relatively premium service compared to some of the cheap labor you can actually buy. But they also don't operate in SF or NYC, so maybe prices are drastically different there.

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seanmcdirmid 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

$1k/month in an HCOL like here in Seattle doesn't give you much:

> In Seattle, hiring a house cleaner typically costs $150 to $500+ per visit, with most recurring standard cleanings for an average-sized home landing between $180 and $300. If you pay by the hour, rates generally range from $45 to $65 per hour for self-employed independent cleaners and $75 to $125 per hour for professional cleaning companies.

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midnightclubbed 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even in high cost of living coastal Southern California these numbers are insane unless you have a $10mil house with 10,000sqft

	▲	what 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not really? I pay $40/h, it takes them 4 hours to clean a 4 bed/2 bath. I do it once a month, but they’re talking twice a week.

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wildzzz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah I only see robomaids as an affordable option for someone that needs help with absolutely everything. These things are built out of commodity parts. Maybe you can make a robomaid a little cheaper if you build a lot of them to offset the upfront costs but not by much. Anytime the robomaid isn't working, it's just decreases the value of having one versus how much you paid for it. So the point would be to put it to work as much as possible such as for an elderly person that's unable to do anything for themselves.