How much do you pay your cleaner?

[Toddlerteaplease]

Mine has just put her prices up to £17 an hour. Which is more than I get paid and I've been a nurse for almost 20 years! Ive been overlooking the fact that she doesn't do the full two hours. But I can't anymore. It's a shame as she's trustworthy and reliable. But it's time to find someone else I think.

I'm a cleaner and charge £11 a hour and believe nurses should earn much more than me.

Two separate issues here.

if she doesn’t do the full time, that need to be addressed if you’re paying by the hour.

From April, my charges will be £19-£25/hour. I don’t actually charge clients hourly. I charge a fixed price per job. But £19-£25 is roughly what I will be clearing g per hour.

The rate you earn is not how much it costs your employer to have you, the costs to employ you will be greater.
A self employed person does not have an employer to pick
up the costs. It comes out of their hourly rate - public liability insurance, NI contributions, pension.
Then you have to factor in travel time, mileage, time and electricity for washing cloths, mops. Products. Advertising, cost of an website. Any time spent doing accounts.

The price a cleaner charges is not what they earn. The price you pay is for the cost of them running their whole business. It is not just for the time spent within your home.

I pay a flat rate of £45. Sometimes she's on her own and here 2 .5 hours, sometimes there are two of them and they're done in just over an hour. I'm in Scotland, fairly large house (3 bathrooms to do).

£15 an hour for three hours. Recently gone up from £13. We provide all materials. She's reliable and always does her three hours.

£15 an hour, we're up north

£10 per hour.

£12.50 per hour, in the Midlands. She brings all her own cleaning products. She’s fab

£18ph here. Not London or anywhere posh but sadly seems the going rate.

Op, just to pick up on the 'unskilled job' bit. If you are of this mindset, you try and do it then.

I am cleaner, all my clients say they have no idea how I do what I do in the time frame. It is very much a skill to get a full clean done, especially in large houses, and ensure everything is covered. I clean everything on each clean, it has taken me years to learn how to do this effectively and do a first class job. Lots of 'professional people' have told me they could not do it.

£20 here.I wouldn't pay any less.I actually raised her rate because she is so good.

£20 ph. Like a PP, I won’t pay less - she needs a living wage too and I don’t want to exploit people.

The going rate was £10ph a decade ago, the cost of living has increased dramatically since then.

How does it compare to carers who don't get paid to travel between clients' homes? Cleaners have a lot less responsibily and need less training. We got rid of ours when she started to charge £18 per hour for a 5 hour clean with materials on top and have not really missed her.

£45 for 3 hours

Just because we’re exploiting people in one industry, doesn’t mean we should exploit people in all industries.

It’s not a race to the bottoms, we should be trying to bring all industries up!

£20/hour in south east, she uses her own cleaning supplies and is very reliable.

£12 an hour. She uses our own cleaning stuff. She's actually not a great cleaner but it's better than nothing! I tried to find another cleaner locally and I was getting quotes for £18 an hour which I was stunned by. Cleaners are valuable and trustworthy but their skill level and training doesn't warrant £18 an hour in my view.

This.
Carers get a bad deal, that isn't fair or right.
The answer is to campaign for carers, not shit on cleaners.

Just gone up to £18.50 and we've had to give notice, felt awful but really can't afford it anymore

Can you expand on what “housekeeping” covers?

I have a part time job, but keep thinking about setting something up which covers home organisation and housekeeping

Perhaps you should do it anyway, just in order to be paying a fair, living wage?

Also just to chip in here I think it also depends if they are definitely declaring their earnings. It's a common trade for cash in hand, so some cleaners are being taxed on their income as they should be, while others are keeping 100%. I'd be happy to be more I'm confident they're treating it properly.

Gah - 'pay more if I'm confident'... typing!!

I would also find someone else if this one doesn't do the full hours you pay for. It might be that you still pay £17/hour but at least you can reset expectations they
will work the hours you pay them for.

I pay £13/hour in London for 5 hours every week. Going rate in my area is £15/hour though. If I paid £15/hour I'd have to cut back I think to less hours or fortnightly.

I don't think I'd realised just how much things have gone up. She'd clearly had the same council tax bill is me. Ours is one of the most expensive in the country. 😬

Why don't you pro rata it and just be more clear that you pay for the time she actually does? I wouldn't pay for 2 hours if she's only doing 1.5, say.