Hi folks, just wondered what the general opinion was on the worst household chore. Got to be a two horse race between cleaning the inside of the windows and cleaning the oven.
We are considering taking on an Oven Cleaning franchise but are curious about the market. Would you pay =A340 to have someone overhaul your oven ?
Chris
Good luck, but it is not for me. Even if I didn't have a self cleaning oven, I'd not pay that much.
Personally I hate dusting.
We are considering taking on an Oven Cleaning franchise but are curious about the market. Would you pay £40 to have someone overhaul your oven ?
In the US, at least, most newer ovens are self-cleaning. I haven't had to do the "heat-the oven-apply chemicals-find gloves-and-old-clothes, scrub-all afternoon" routine in about fifteen years, so no, I wouldn't need to pay someone for that. What *would* I pay $80 to have done? Hmmm....
-outdoor window washing
-anything that involves tools I don't currently own (power-washing the exterior, steam cleaning rugs and furniture, that sort of thing)
-large "annual cleaning"-type jobs that I procrastinate over (scrubbing and bleaching tile grout, carpet shampooing, closet organizing and cleaning... the big, time-consuming things that aren't part of weekly cleaning)
Donna
Ever clean a toilet?
I wouldn't pay anything -- I have a self-cleaning oven. All I have to do is press the button that says "Clean", wait a few hours, and then brush or vacuum the ash out of the bottom.
How much would you pay to have somebody come over and push the button for you?
i'd pay $80 to have someone listen to my wife complain about my uncontrollable urge to fix stuff.
Save it to buy new versions of what you 'fix'.
Cheers, Banty
Too many self-cleaning ovens around here.
IF I were you, I would go into general housekeeping, or something like car detailing. I *did* pay for that once, to spruce up a car for sale, and I think I'd use it again about yearly.
Banty
I would say cleaning the OUTSIDE of the windows is worse, clambering around in bushes and leaning over strange angles on ladders... the insides of windows are a piece of cake unless they're someplace unreachable by a 6-foot ladder. I might pay $75 a year to have someone do outside windows on a two-story house.
I used to pay $70 a month in the Washington DC metro area (a high cost-of-living area) to have two bathrooms and a kitchen scrubbed top-to-bottom and a two bedroom apartment dusted and vacuumed (did the cleaning myself other weeks). 40GBP/$70USD for an oven cleaning on even a non-self-cleaning oven sounds ridiculously high.
Sorry...
-- Jennifer
-> -> >Hi folks, just wondered what the general opinion was on the worst
-> >household chore. Got to be a two horse race between cleaning the inside
-> >of the windows and cleaning the oven.
->
-> Ever clean a toilet?
-> >
-> >We are considering taking on an Oven Cleaning franchise but are curious
-> >about the market. Would you pay =A340 to have someone overhaul your oven
-> >?
->
-> I wouldn't pay anything -- I have a self-cleaning oven. All I have to do is
-> press the button that says "Clean", wait a few hours, and then brush or
-> vacuum the ash out of the bottom.
That's pretty expensive, too. The cleaning is done by raising the temperature in the oven so high that whatever food debris is in there turns to ash. It uses a lot of electricity (or gas). Not as expensive as someone cleaning the oven for you, but more costly than manually cleaning the thing. (Like mom used to do.)
Optional:
No, it isn't.
I'm perfectly well aware of how a self-cleaning oven works -- and also well aware that my time has value, too. And it's not nearly as expensive as you think: only about a dollar's worth of electricity.
How much does it cost in supplies to clean an oven manually? Fifty cents? A quarter? So you're saving fifty to seventy-five cents by cleaning it manually. How much is your time worth? Is the twenty to thirty minutes it takes to clean an oven manually really worth only a couple of quarters?
On Wed 15 Mar 2006 10:33:30a, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it Doug Miller?
Absolutely! I find that I only need to use the self-cleaning cycle 3-4 times a year or, at the most, once every other month. I keep a disposable aluminum tray in the bottom which handles any major spillovers.
It's not even the money issue. I simply don't relish getting down on the floor and dealing with the chemicals and scrubbing.
No, it is free. Really, it is. Do you heat your house? If so, you clean the oven, you make heat that helps to heat your house instead of using your central heater. No additional cost. We don't clean the oven in the summer because we do a lot more grilling outside. When we do clean the oven, most often it is right after something was roasting so it is already warmed up rather well. Your mom spent many hours of labor for no return.
It this better than using caustic chemicals that will go into the sewage system?
Gotta be cleaning up in the yard after the dog...
There are places that offer this service, and there have been times I've been tempted....it just seems like it would be the epitome of laziness, though. Not that that's too far from the mark :-)
Weeding through junk mail ... similar to weeding through spam, mlm, and scam usenet articles.
Suzie-Q ( snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net) said... [about self cleaning ovens...]
Hogwash.
Just look at the Energuide ratings on appliances ("Energuide" is what we have here in Canada, but there is a similar sticker on new appliances in the USA with a similar-sounding name that escapes me at the moment).
Self cleaning ovens use LESS energy overall than non-self cleaning ovens.
How can that be, when the cleaning is done as Suzie-Q describes above?
Simple: insulation.
Due to the high temperatures needed for the cleaning cycle, the oven must be far better insulated than non-self cleaning units.
This insulation level results in the appliance using less energy during cooking operations. So much less energy, that the energy used to clean it once in awhile added to the cooking energy it consumes is LESS than the energy consumed by a non-self cleaner. That does not even consider any environmental costs that using chemical cleaners impose.
Now, I suppose that if you run the cleaning cycle fairly often, it will consume more energy. In practice, we probably run the self cleaning cycle on ours just about as often (maybe a little more) as we would perform a manual cleaning if this oven were not a self cleaner, which is probably between four and six times a year. Your mileage may vary.
worst housecleaning job for me would have to be anything that involves the bathroom - cleaning the tub, moping the floor, absolutely the worst for me.
It sounds like you're trying to reinvent the wheel. While interior window=20 washing and oven cleaning may not come standard, finding a cleaning service =
to tackle those jobs shouldn't be a Herculean task. If I'm going to pay=20 someone to come and do those jobs, they might as well clean the rest of the =
house.
Some jobs such as exterior window washing can require a good deal of=20 coordination and effort for homeowners. Realistically, you're likely to=20 get clients for any service dealing with heights (window washing, gutter=20 cleaning, et cetera). As Paul said, dog clean-up is easy but pretty low on =
the list of things people care to do.
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