Hellobee Boards

We have a lady who has cleaned my parents' house for...20 years? We had her stop coming for the first month or two (and still paid.) Then numbers were way low in our area (none for over a month) so she started coming again. Now, cases are rising (though we are still in a very low-hit state), but we really trust her (and she us). We've been very communicative about what we've been doing and she comes if/when she's comfortable (and we leave the house while she's here, just in case.) She is older and high risk, so I'm much more concerned with exposing her than with being exposed. We had a potential exposure a few weeks ago and she just skipped for a bit. But I wouldn't feel comfortable with a stranger.

We let ours come back, but we left while she was here. It’s through a service though, and I’m considering requesting someone else for our next cleaning. She came to the door sans mask, and when I asked her to put one on she didn’t even have one with her. Luckily we have extras, but it makes me really leery of letting her come back in again.

The next time we’re scheduled to have it cleaned, we’ll be going out of town for a week right after, so I definitely plan on keeping it scheduled since we won’t be around to touch the surfaces or breathe in the air for days afterward.

@jennlin821: I’m in Ontario like @erinbaderin and we had our cleaner come back twice now. I feel comfortable with our provinces progress and masks are mandatory in indoor spaces in our city now, and I feel their precautions are enough. Like you, I had a rough time the first two months of the pandemic. I struggle with health anxiety so this is/was a nightmare for me. But over time, I have come to accept that getting back to life means accepting risk and all I can do is try to keep as low risk as possible. My younger son started back to daycare last week, I went into a grocery store for the first time a couple weeks ago, we have our cleaner come and I’m back at work 5 days per week. We wear masks, limit as much as we can, wash hands, change clothes, etc. Having the cleaning service come again has been extremely helpful and I think in your case I would do it.

@jennlin821: We allowed our cleaner (actually cleaners; it’s a woman who brings the same two women with her each time) back three weeks ago. I’m pretty okay with it. We split our cleaning service basically between floors (upstairs bathrooms only + downstairs on A weeks, upstairs + kitchen/1st floor bath and high traffic spots on B weeks), so it’s easy to stay out of their way. They mask the whole time they clean, and we mask if we need to pass through their area. But having a team means they are only here 1.5-2 hours, so it’s not hard to have the kids avoid them. Other precautions they take include cleaning their indoor only shoes between homes with bleach wipes (changing in the garages), wearing masks/gloves, and changing vacuum bags between homes in cases where they bring their own equipment. We have central vac so that doesn’t apply to us anyway. Fortunately for me, a decent number of her other clients are my friends, so I know where she’s been! 🤪

@jennlin821: RIGHT?! I was dumbfounded. I have a really hard time with confrontation, but this was/is ridiculous. It made me feel uncomfortable thinking of all of the other houses she must go into.

@jennlin821: We have had the same woman for about 7 years. We asked her to stay home (still paid her) for the first 12 weeks of COVID. She’s been back now 2 times. We leave the house while she’s in it and I figure she’s following her own self with disinfectant ...

We use a service and we suspended it in April and May but then in June decided to let them come back. The company was very proactive about masks and gloves and using fresh cleaning cloths and we made sure we weren't home when they came (in June we did a day trip to strawberry pick and in July we went to a small beach, both during the week to avoid crowds). It's been nice to have it again and I feel like the risk is fairly small with the protections they take and us not being here when they are.

We're pretty cautious and did have our service come back. Ours wear masks, gloves, and shoe covers. When they are here, we open all the windows that will open, go outside for the duration, and leave the house to air out for half an hour after they are gone. We are in MA and did not have them here in Mar/Apr/May when cases were surging, but did once things got under control...

I think the combination of them wearing masks and opening all windows to improve ventilation makes it low risk. It is important to me that they wear masks, as if not there will be more of whatever they are exhaling to linger in the air...