Household staffing founded 2025
Good help, on the books.
Hearthline places housekeepers, nannies, cooks, grounds staff and laundry help with private households. Every placement is a W-2 job with overtime, a written agreement and an employment record somebody can point to ten years from now.
- Housekeepers
- Nannies & family assistants
- Cooks
- Grounds & property
- Laundry, linen & errands
Why we started this
Most of this work is still paid in cash.
Domestic work is one of the oldest kinds of employment in the country and one of the least likely to come with a pay stub. It's also one of the few where the employer is a person rather than a company, and usually has no idea they have become an employer at all.
That's how it goes wrong, and it rarely goes wrong out of malice. A family pays a weekly rate in cash because that's what the last family did. Nobody writes down the hours. Then five years later somebody needs an employment history for a mortgage application, or files an unemployment claim, or is asked for proof of income by a landlord, and there's nothing there. Not a disputed record. No record.
A cash job is a job you can't prove you ever had.
So every Hearthline placement is a W-2 job. That isn't a position we've taken; it is mostly what the law already says. The IRS treats a household worker whose hours and methods you control as your employee, and sets out the federal tax side of it in Publication 926. Wage and hour is a separate body of law, and a growing number of states — New York first in 2010, then Hawaii, California and Massachusetts — have written domestic-worker protections on top of both.
We handle the part families dread. Payroll, withholding, year-end forms, and workers' compensation where the state requires it. The family gets a clean set of records. The worker gets a job that counts toward Social Security, a loan and a life.
The ledger
What these jobs look like, line by line.
Schedules vary household to household. The last column is the part that catches people out, and between them those five lines are the reason most private arrangements end badly.
| Role | Typical schedule | The thing people get wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Housekeeper | One to five days a week, four to eight hours a day. | Paying a flat day rate doesn't remove overtime once the week passes forty hours. |
| Nanny & family assistant | Full time, live-out. Occasionally live-in. | A guaranteed-hours agreement is normal and belongs in writing before week one, not after the first slow week. |
| Cook | Two to four services a week, or by event. | Shopping and prep are working time. A three-hour dinner is rarely three hours. |
| Grounds & property | Weekly in season, monthly out of it. | Someone who works only for you, on your schedule, with your equipment, is an employee and not a contractor — whatever the handshake said. |
| Laundry, linen & errands | By the visit, often alongside another role. | Mileage on errands is required in California, Illinois and Massachusetts and is a contract term everywhere else — which is why it's the most forgotten line in household employment. |
Who we place
Five kinds of hands.
Housekeepers
Weekly, every other week, or daily for a full house. Deep cleans and turnovers too.
Nannies
One family, school runs included. Newborn care and family assistants on request.
Cooks
Batch cooking, dinner service, and the allergy and dietary work that goes with a household.
Grounds & property
Beds, lawns, gutters, snow. The jobs nobody notices until the week they stop happening.
Laundry & errands
By the visit. Usually the first thing to fall over when a household gets busy.
For households
You're about to become an employer. We make that the easy part.
Hiring someone into your home isn't the same as booking a service. It comes with real obligations, and almost nobody explains them before the first week. We do that up front, then take the administration off your hands entirely.
- We run payroll, withholding and year-end forms. You approve the hours
- Workers' compensation arranged where your state requires it
- References called, background screening, and a driving record where the role includes a car
- A written work agreement before day one: hours, duties, paid time off, notice
- 90-day replacement if the match doesn't hold
- No cash arrangements, which is what keeps both of you covered if anything goes wrong
For workers
A pay stub, and a name on the agreement.
You have probably been paid in cash, asked to stay late for nothing, and told the job was four hours when it was six. None of that is unusual in this work and none of it is fine.
- You never pay us. Not a fee, not a deposit, not for a background check
- Every placement is a W-2 job, with overtime after forty hours
- Rate, hours, duties and notice period in writing before your first day
- Travel between households on the same day is paid
- We won't send you to a house that has refused a written agreement
- Interview accommodations arranged on request, with no documentation needed
- Intake in English or Spanish — atendemos en español
On the books
The part everyone skips.
Three things worth knowing before you hire anybody into your home. None of this is legal advice, and a household with a complicated situation should talk to an accountant — but none of it is obscure either, and being surprised by it later is expensive.
You may already owe employment taxes. Above an annual threshold the IRS sets each year, wages paid to a household worker carry Social Security and Medicare, and the household files a Schedule H with its return. A weekly housekeeper clears that threshold in most of the country.
Overtime applies to almost everyone. Federal minimum wage and overtime reach most domestic work, with narrow exemptions for casual babysitting and companionship that an agency placement doesn't qualify for. A live-out worker earns time and a half past forty hours. A live-in worker is exempt from federal overtime but still owed minimum wage for every hour worked, and several states are stricter again — which is exactly the kind of thing to settle before the first week.
Calling someone a contractor doesn't make them one. If you set the hours, supply the equipment and decide how the work gets done, that person is your employee no matter what the agreement says.
Every placement is a W-2
No cash arrangements, at any rate, for any role, for anybody. This is the one thing we won't negotiate.
A written agreement, signed first
Hours, duties, rate, overtime, paid time off and notice period, agreed by both sides before the first day.
Overtime is paid, not averaged
A long Tuesday doesn't get canceled out by a short Thursday. Federally the week is the week — and in California and a few other states the day is the day too, with overtime after eight hours in one.
Travel between households is paid
If somebody works two of your neighbors' houses in a day, the time between them belongs on the timesheet.
Candidates never pay
Households pay our fee. Workers pay nothing, at any stage. If somebody claiming to be Hearthline asks you for money, it isn't us.
Two languages, all the way through
Intake, the work agreement itself and the payroll paperwork in English or Spanish. El acuerdo de trabajo y la documentación de nómina están disponibles en español.
How it runs
Four steps, and a trial day in the middle.
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The walk-through
We come to the house, or do it on a call if that's easier. Room by room: what needs doing weekly, what only matters before guests, who else is in the house, and which animals bite. Households consistently underestimate the hours by about a third, and it's better to find that out now.
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A shortlist, and real phone calls
References get a phone call from a person. Background screening, and a driving record where the role involves a car or a school run. Every candidate is scored against the same written list of what this household needs.
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A paid trial day
One full day, paid at the agreed rate whether or not it goes anywhere. An hour in a kitchen tells you almost nothing; a day tells you both everything. Unpaid trials are common in this industry and we don't run them.
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The agreement, then the follow-up
Both sides sign before the first real day. We set up payroll, then call each of you separately at day seven and day thirty — separately, because the honest version is rarely the one people give in front of each other.
In their words
What changed for them.
-
I had been cleaning the same four houses for nine years and couldn't get a car loan, because on paper I had never worked. The first pay stub made me cry, which I didn't expect.
Housekeeper Placed 2025 -
We thought we were being generous by paying cash above the going rate. Hearthline walked us through what we actually owed, set up the payroll, and it cost us far less than the accountant's first estimate.
Household Two children, weekly housekeeper -
The trial day was paid, which no agency had ever done. It also told me the job wasn't right, and I could say so without feeling I had wasted anybody's money.
Nanny Placed 2025
Questions
Asked often.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules differ by state and change; check your own situation before relying on any of it.
Is paying on the books going to cost me a lot more?
Less than people expect, and you'll know the number before anything is signed. The employer side is Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment, and workers' compensation where your state requires it. We give you the figure for your situation before you commit to anything.
It's also worth weighing against the alternative, which is an uninsured worker in your house and a tax liability that can reach back years — and indefinitely where no return was filed at all.
What if my housekeeper wants to be paid in cash?
It comes up often, and usually for reasons that make sense from where they're standing — a benefit that might be affected, a bad experience with a previous filing, or never having been given the choice. We talk it through with them directly. What we won't do is place somebody into an arrangement that leaves them with no record and you with an unresolved liability.
Do I have to guarantee hours?
No law requires it anywhere in the country. It's a strong market norm for full-time nannies and we insist on it in writing, because somebody who has held their whole week for your family should not absorb the cost of a holiday you booked. For hourly housekeeping and grounds work it's more flexible, but the notice period belongs in the agreement either way.
What does it cost a household?
A placement fee for a permanent hire, agreed in writing before we start and payable when somebody begins. If you would rather we stay as the employer of record and handle payroll on an ongoing basis, that's an hourly rate which already contains taxes, insurance and our margin.
I don't have references or a written work history. Can I still register?
Yes. Long stretches of work that nobody wrote down are normal in this field, and we know how to verify them.
Separately: work authorization is confirmed on Form I-9, the same way it is for any job in the country. We say that at the first conversation so nobody spends weeks on a process that was never going to work.
Background screening is a consumer report, so you get the disclosure and give written permission before we run one, and a copy of the report plus a chance to dispute it if anything in it counts against you.
Do you do live-in placements?
Sometimes, and carefully. Where live-in goes wrong is the line between being on the clock and just being in the house. If we set one up, the hours, the private room and the time properly off are written down before anybody moves in.
Can you cover a single deep clean?
Yes. Move-outs, post-renovation cleans and seasonal jobs are hourly work on our payroll, so there's no placement fee and no employer paperwork for you at all. It's also a low-risk way to see how somebody works before you talk about anything regular.
Start here
Tell us what the week looks like.
Whichever side of this you're on, a person reads it and answers within one business day.
¿Trabaja en casas particulares? Escríbanos en español y le respondemos en español.
Prefer email melo@hearthlinehomelabor.com