When I was in graduate school and working I has a friend give me the name of the Dynamo who cleaned for her every week. I couldn't afford every week or even a full day, so arranged for her to come over every other week and simply work on the baseline items. But in order to do that, as BillD and Helen have noted, she needed to get to the areas needing cleaning. She wasn't hired to pick up after my children or me. My list was simple, and she worked down it and stopped when she reached four hours. We left notes for each other, and sometimes I was home when she was there working, and I had to remind myself not to distract her (she did not fit the image of the "typical" cleaning woman in any way--she was a single mom who cleaned houses so she could set her hours and have the time she needed with her kids, and we enjoyed sharing stories about our kids). She ususually looked like she'd just come in from a game of golf or tennis, fit and tan and in great shape, and her "uniform" was shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers.

My list was something like this:
Clean the kitchen (surfaces, sweep and mop floor)
Clean the bathrooms (surfaces, sweep and mop floor)
Vacuum carpeted areas

That actually didn't take that long, so other tasks filled in, like cleaning windows, cleaning the mini-blinds, and sometimes things like ironing. And I know there were other things that I've forgotten about now. She did yard work, was great at putting up wallpaper, etc. Though she worked a few hours a week for Merry Maids, she worked for several people on the side. I paid $10 an hour, for about 8 hours a month, so I was a small client, and if she needed to come a different day because something bigger came along, I figured that was fair, and she never left me in the lurch.

Alas, my talented Candace suffered a massive stroke about four years ago (she was only 49) due to an undetected change in her blood pressure. She was badly injured by that event and now lives in a nursing home. It was very sad.