Cleaner coming! it's my first time.....

[Robotgirl]

Hello all
I have a cleaner coming tomorrow.
It's my first time 
I've just spent half an hour doing a --pre-cleaner clean.
I--s it ok to give them a list of things I'd like them to do? Things like cleaning between the blinds, fronts of kitchen cupboards, skirting boards, radiators, all the things I NEVER get around to doing?
I have a small 2 bed terrace & was going to ask for these things above plus kitchen, bathroom & floors & hoovering. I wonder if that's ok for one person & two hrs? Any pointers welcome - Its all new to me.
PS I know I can just ask the cleaner but wanted to get an idea. Excited.

[OliviaTJoyce]

Hey, sorry for the late response but yes, you can totally give a list with things to be cleaned. I do this constantly. That's why you hire the cleaner in the first place, isn't it? To clean what you don't have time to. I don't know about the hours, though. I think that the cleaner will let you know if it's too much. But you better give a bit on top than too little. No one will complain if you give just a few things, right?
Don't stress about it and good luck :)

[DanglyEarOrnaments]

Sorry, I am so late with my reply but as a cleaning business owner for nearly 20 years I had to just say it would depend upon the scope of the work agreed within the price. That sounds a lot for a first clean, I think it would take a person most of the day to get on top of all that unless it was for one or two rooms.

The work you are asking for sounds like an initial deep clean to get the house up-together first we would need a team of two on it for a good few hours for an initial deep clean. An initial deep clean of a kitchen (in a cleanish house) sometimes takes us around one and a half to two hours for one person for example but after that initial clean can be kept up-together in half an hour or less in some cases.

If I were a client I would let a solo cleaner do what she can manage the first time, just get on top of the basics in some areas and then she can gradually get the rest up together within her systems of work as she goes on. That is what i used to do before I had our teams of cleaners to do the initial deep cleans. It all needs discussion from the start before a price is agreed to, as a cleaner you don;t want to set your rate an then find out more tasks are being sneaked in for free and your agreed workload has now doubled.

I would also book a double spot just to get the basics up-together for the first clean. Cleaners always need to spend more time on an initial clean no matter how clean the house because they need to get it up to professional cleaning standards first before they can then maintain that and add more into the clean if that makes sense.

[toots111]

I think you need to give the cleaner a couple of weeks to get used to your home and get the basics up to their standards plus figure out how long it takes to do the 'basic' clean. Then I think you can ask for one or two extras per week and they will let you know if they have time or if something will have to give that week. So for example I alternate between the baby's room and the spare room being cleaned because neither gets too dirty but there isn't time to do both in the time I pay for. And some weeks I might say can you clean the kitchen cupboards and she'll say yes but I can't do the ensuite r something like that. But I have to be honest I trust her to just keep the house clean and make these decisions herself most of the time!