@Barbara1498 I'm on the Blue Hill Peninsula, where tradition has Saturday-to-Saturday rentals like yours. When I started, I had a cleaner who was able to come on the other days (for the most part). But she didn't like it.
I didn't want to switch to weekly-only in order to have a calendar that didn't vary. My bookings were coming in all over the place, 2 nights, 5 nights, check in or out any day of the week.
I looked in the local papers for cleaning help and found someone at $40 an hour. I tried her in the off season and she was unreliable. So I put an ad in the Weekly Packet for $35 an hour. I had more than a dozen applicants and chose two - one main person and one alternate, as the main cleaner had a lot of weekend turnovers down in Stonington.
The main cleaner liked doing the three houses so much that she is now the only cleaner, and she has been a godsend.
A little bit of math: One listing takes up to 3 hours to clean, so the cleaning fee there is $105. If Patty cleans it in two hours, she's paid $70. The $35 extra is not pure profit for me, because don't forget that the Airbnb fee is a percentage of the total including the cleaning fee. Overall, the yearly cleaning fees collected roughly equal what she's paid. That's because I go up and she has to clean for me, too. So it all equals out.
So - I would recommend trying to get some intel on what cleaners are being paid, then put an ad in the Ellsworth paper for something more than that, ask for resumes and references, and set aside some days when you can be there to interview everyone.
When your booking settings are somewhat inflexible (such as a one-week requirement), your listing won't show up in searches as much. At first I had a 4-night minimum, reasoning that no one would want to pay a high cleaning fee for 1 night. But I had so many requests for shorter stays that I lowered it to a one-night minimum. No complaints, plenty of bookings, happy housekeeper with 6 kids to feed.
PM me if you want more info or want to discuss more!
