to think 4 hours is enough to clean a 4 bedroom house?

First cleans always take longer. Judge her or him after the second clean...

it takes me 5 hrs or more to clean 4 bedrooms,3.5bathrooms,kitchen,livingroom, dining room,stairs and balcony, take into consideration that I have to do laundry as this is an air BnB and my employer thinks I take too long, when I am done they have no complaints,I hoover air vents, clean walls, dust wipe vacuum move furniture clean under beds, clean, what do y’all think

Sounds like some was more a deep clean. Surface clean my friend does my 5bed house in just over 2hrs

Ha, this maybe an old thread but it's still relevant. I came across it when googling how long it should take to clean an average 3/4 bed house. Being poor, feeling like it's something I should do myself and hating cleaning I have a proper dilemma.

I think the OP should cut the new cleaner a bit of slack and see how it goes. Cleaning properly is skilled and hard job: in a previous life I was a hospital domestic which was a cleaner who also made toast and I've never been as fit as I was then.

Personally my house would take a couple of folk a few days to clean, maybe because I am a clutter bug and one of the least house proud people I know. I farm with my OH, a mucky almost 24/7 job, have a mucky farm dog, 3 farm cats and 3 kids at home. The bloomin dog is in danger of being evicted out to the sheds as even I have had enough. Mind that Dulux? ad with an Old English Sheep dog that comes in the house and shakes whilst a genteel little girl is playing a piano. Well I have a splatter tide mark permanently around my kitchen & conservatory from the critter shaking every time it comes in which can be upwards of 7 times a day.

I don't think that's great tbh, unless you have an absolutely massive kitchen and she spent time washing down all the walls etc.

Vacuuming or mopping a tidy room takes minutes - I can hoover everywhere (2 bedrooms, bathroom, lr, kitchen, stairs, up and down hallway) and mop the downstairs hardfloors and bathroom in about half an hour.

So other than 3 floors, she dusted the lr and cleaned the showerroom and kitchen in 4 hours? I hope you can see your face in every surface op!

Our cleaner does our 4 bed house in 3 hours, but the first 3 times she came she did 4 hours - as others have said, it takes time to get to know the house and get everything up to standard. We don't expect her to do the windows (very occasionally I will pay her an extra hour to do those) but she does do the kitchen, floors, vacuum the whole house, two bathrooms and downstairs loo and dust most of the rooms in that time. We have two spare bedrooms which don't need a lot of cleaning so I tell her to miss those out if she is running short on time.

My cleaner sacked me for being fussy
It is hard to know where the line is I think

I'm not a cleaner, it takes me 1.5hrs to hoover me stairs and hallway (two flights), this includes wiping down skirting boards, bannisters and window sills. I hate housework and wish I could understand how people do it so quickly.

I don't think you are giving her a fair chance. I have a five bed detached house and it takes me about 6 hours to give it a good once-over (but certainly not a deep or professional clean). It takes up a great deal of my weekend. I think I need a cleaner!

I spent 4.5hours cleaning our similar size house last week (visitors) and it still wasn't totally clean. To be fair, that involved some tidying, but what really did for me was the glass shower enclosure which took FOREVER - hard water area. I certainly didnt clear out any cupboards!

I suggest you work as a cleaner -I did it- to see how long it takes...

I'm a cleaner and in 4 hours I would do , bedrooms , change beds if needed , all inside windows ensuites bathroom incl floors , hall stairs landings, Polish all surfaces ,Hoover everywhere , some skirtings I alternate , kitchen thorough clean , loos , playrooms . I have to work but could get most done . Depends how much I need to tidy to clean if it's only a bit of paperwork I do quite well but hard work ??

Pixie, I could do one hour's cleaning in my own house and call it a do but it certainly wouldn't be comparable in any way to the service we are selling to customers.

My own house is cleanish and the cleaning I could do in an hour would not be a full job at all just a scuff over really.

Well what is properly? I dust, wipe down, clean the toilet, wash dishes, mop everwhere. I can and do. Mind you, its my house and i dont have a cleaner. I dont clean out the cupboards though or wash the windows weekly.

Think 4 hours to totally clean a four bed home including sorting out cupboards etc is a bit optimistic, especially first time.

For no other reason than she'll be unsure of her surroundings etc, never mind differing standards of how the house was to begin with. So there may be things you are are unaware of (and therefore skip) that she has done (and that you don't notice as you are aren't aware of them). And because they haven't been done before (because you don't notice them) they took a while to get up to scratch.

For example, DH thinks I take ages to hover, but I do things like tops of skirting boards, under sofas (as well as the cushions and cracks in the sofa), in corners of bedframes, behind curtains even if it means changing the attachment. I also do things like take out sink traps and clean down the plughole a bit, clean round crevices in plugholes/overflows etc.

I'm not saying she did those specific things, just that the very things you don't notice and haven't done, are the things that would eat up time when she did them (and you still wouldn't notice them).

I'm in a 3 bed detached, mine does my whole house in 2 hours! I've got two bathrooms and downstairs loo. She does miss the occasional bit but she's amazing!! I can't think of anything she doesn't clean other than the Venetian blinds, but who can blame her!! She even changes the sheets on the bed if she notices I've taken it off, she's pegged my washing out too on occasion, I'd never ask her to do this though! I dread the day she gives it up!!!

Pixie, you can't possible clean a 3 bedroom house properly in one hour.

It takes me an hour to clean my whole house! I hoover and sweep everywhere - 3 bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen, bathroom. Then i mop my hall, sitting room, bathroom. Dust in the sitting room and hall. Clean the toilet, clean the kitchen, dishes etc and thats me. How can it take somebody 4 hrs?

Initial clean = gutting every room, and moving furniture to get at skirtings etc.
My friends a cleaner and she cleaned for me whilst I was recovering from my elcs, she did an initial clean (house was not too bad) which took her an entire day, but think wiping tops of door frames! And then came in twice weekly and concentrated on upstairs one day and downstairs the next, she did however Hoover and mop all floors on both visits. In total she was cleaning for me for 6 hours a week, I have a 5 bedroom/4 reception room house. So in essence after an initial clean I do think 4 hours is enough to clean a 4 bedroom house.

I'm sure it's hard to get to 'know' a house. I would cut her some slack.

I wouldn't be able to clean my own house in 4 hours. If I were doing a deep clean the kitchen would take that time on its own.

If I clear the floors and Hoover daily it still takes an hour as sofas and chairs need to be moved.

I agree with others it depends on the level of cleaning required: if all surfaces are completely clear, there is no clutter and all toiletries have been been removed from the bathroom/ shower room products can be sprayed on, hoovering done, then everything wiped off to finish the room. But if things have to be moved first it adds to the tidying up time.

An initial or gut clean will be literally cleaning every surface in the house to make sure it's a perfectly clean canvas to start with, then its just maintenance cleans on a weekly etc basis. So for a kitchen as another poster said, all cupboards emptied and fully cleaned, dishes, pots pans etc done, the unit tops, cooker, sinks, tiles behind cookers and fridge, all appliances wiped down, light fittings cleaned/dusted, skirting, floor. In the living room it would be behind and under sofa, under cushions, light fittings, cleaning shelving/units, windows, tv, dusting coving,....every possible surface. It takes a lot longer than a quick hoover and dust!

The initial clean takes about twice to three times as long (depending how clean the family live in the home) just to get up to professional cleaning standards because of the build up.

Most professional cleaning services are aware of this and it should be communicated to the client in the first meeting.

My house is very clean but we don't do a full professional service in it each time, as the homeowners we just clean it in parts and don't do the full service we are selling (because it's ours and we haven't the time) so if we did an initial clean on ours it would take double the time of subsequent cleans.

A dirty house can take around 13/14 man hours - ie a full day with a team of two, this is regardless of size, some small two-bed terraces have taken us this long to get up-together but can then be maintained in 2 man hours after that.

It's just part of a normal process of getting the house into the 'maintenance' phase of the cleaning.

initial clean she did do less though, admittedly