Cleaner, how often for how long?

[meemaa]

I'm looking to get a cleaner in as I'm struggling to keep on top of things.
I start FT work at the beginning of January and I'm finding it so hard to juggle everything with work, keeping the house clean, making dinner, doing the washing, etc. as well as making sure I get to spend time with my 18 month old.
I've found a cleaning company that charges £14 an hour with a minimum charge of £28, so I guess two hours worth.
Do you think two hours a week would be enough? I was thinking on a Friday so it's nice for the weekend and I don't have to waste time at the weekend cleaning. I have a three bed terrace house. One bathroom and one reception room. Porch, kitchen and stairs. Would two hours be enough for that? I'd be happy with just the kitchen, bathroom and living room being cleaned and the whole house being hoovered. I don't really want to pay more than the two hours a week. Thanks

Oh also, we seem to have a fair bit of clutter but I'd make sure it was clutter free and tidy to make things easier.

It depends on how clean you like your house and how much you can afford to pay? I have a 4 bed 2 bath house and spend 5-6 hours weekly on a cleaner. I like every single nook, cranny and corner cleaned,shelves wiped of dust etc, hoover under sofa.

2 hours does seem a little short for 3 beds, bath and kitchen. Most cleaners estimate 30 minutes per room + 1 hour for kitchen.

We have a 4-bed, 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom and have three hours every week. Two hours might not be quite enough

However, why not ask them to trial? You can always ask for 2.5 hours, or 4 hours every two weeks of it isn't quite working

I am a self employed cleaner. I do a couple of 2 hour jobs in similar size properties but on the agreement that only specific jobs/ rooms are done with a bit of dusting done if there's a few minutes left etc.
It really depends on the basic level of cleanliness and, importantly, tidiness, in your home. Clutter majorly slows the cleaning down and therefore your cleaner will get less done.
For a thorough job, more time would definitely be needed, but if you are happy with only certain areas been done, 2 hours is possible.

We have a 2 bed and our cleaner comes weekly for a couple of hours. She does the bathroom, kitchen, living room and dining room and just hoovers the bedrooms. It's not a deep clean but it keeps the dirt down! It takes her less than 2 hours to do this, more like an hour and 40 mins.

Two hours once a week but she rotates the bedrooms around so they get a good clean every three weeks and a quick wipe over the other two weeks.

I decided to be a SAHM for a few months when Mat Leave ended but financially it was a real struggle so we decided I'd go back to work. Really it was the only option but I'm struggling to cope. I'm out of the house from 7:45am until roughly 5:45pm. My DS is at nursery all day. Five days a week. I get home after work and feel so drained with no energy or motivation. I struggle to even put a load of washing on. DH has been the one keeping on top of the basics like loading and emptying the dishwasher, cooking the dinner and putting the washing on. I feel terrible that I'm not doing my share but I'm just struggling so much with it all. I feel detached from DS because I just feel so drained. A few days this week when I've picked him up from nursery he hasn't wanted to come home which in some ways is reassuring but it also really hurts, so I feel like I'm detaching myself so that I don't feel it. I get through monday to friday and then by friday night, I crack. I cry and just go straight to bed. DH suggested a cleaner to try and ease the pressure and free up some time for relaxing and spending quality time with DS but the point of me returning to work was so that we had the extra money to be able to afford christmases and birthday and have an emergency fund set aside, so that we could have the odd day out and do fun things with DS and I don't want to feel like I've returned to work for nothing. I don't want to spend all my wages paying for someone else to look after DS or paying for someone else to clean my house. It just feels like I stay home, look after DS and clean and we have no money or I got to work and pay someone else to do those things and still have no money. I mean, we'd still have slightly more if I worked but yeah, I don't know, I'm just struggling. Sorry.

I could probably manage to give the bedrooms a quick once over once a week, I find them the easiest rooms to do. I guess the two hours, even if it isn't enough to do everywhere will at least take some of the pressure off. Does, cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, hoovering the whole house and a quick dust in the living room sound doable for the two hours?

There are two things we prioritise in this house, sleep and mental health. Having a cleaner once a week helps with both. It's £30 a week well spent because neither of us have to worry about the bathrooms getting cleaned, or the kitchen floor or the vacuuming.

We'd never go back to trying to do it all. To us it's an investment.

We get two hours a week on a Friday , she mops all the floors , hoovers , dusts surfaces , she will pop some laundry in , change beds and clean bathroom in that - I love coming home to the basics done

I think I'll speak to them about the two hours a week then and see how it goes

Get yourself a robot vacuum as well, to help with floors in between cleaning visits.