If Your Cleaner Doesn't Speak English, How Do You Communicate?

[roses2]

My cleaner doesn't speak English so I send her lists via WhatsApp which she then uses Google translate. This week I sent her the following in English:

***
Today can you please clean the following?

• kitchen
• living room
• change bed sheets
• toilet (not shower or bath)

***

After one hour I went to see what she was doing and she had changed bedsheets in two rooms and was cleaning the bathroom mirror and sink and I stopped her before she started on the shower (still not a lot for one hour but her speed is a separate issue). For the toilet I wanted her to clean the toilet bowl only, not anything else in the room.

Clearly there is some miscommunication. How do I best communicate??

I will add she is lovely and hard working and I want to work with her to clean what I ask, just not sure how to get my list across.

Google direct speech using her phone. Not yours.

Hmm. A lot of posters are enabling her not to speak English.

Enablement can be playing into the hands of an abuser at home.

Half the house each week? Draw up a calendar and write which rooms for which weeks - eg 14/11/24 - downstairs, 21/11/24 upstairs.

That's a bit of a stretch...

The main reason my cleaner doesn't speak great English is lack of opportunities. She socialises with people from her home country and she doesn't have much opportunity to speak to people when working.

Hilarious! Made me snort

Use DeepL. Much better than Google translate.

We just had to cancel our cleaning agency because of non-English speaking staff.

It was ridiculous, the latest cleaner needed the Google Translate for everything and unfortunately with one of us in the house when the cleaner comes it means sometimes things have to be changed or we have to make one room off-limit (DH works from home permanently, so we can't just leave her on her own).

I don't mind language limitation but a basic understanding is necessary.

Our mother tongue is not English either, and I remember having language issues when we moved. But no knowledge at all just doesn't work.

You could try flash cards , or a laminated sheet with rudimentary drawings (and a Portuguese and English label) then tick or cross each image each visit?

Would it be easier for her to do all of upstairs one week and all downstairs the next week??
that way there is no need for specific lists, or one item only in a specific room….

You can get a phone app that will translate on the fly while you talk to someone.

I write her messages using Whatsapp translate. I sometimes translate them back to English using Google translate to make sure they're not too garbled.

How big is your house op,? Our cleaner did a 3 bed semi right through in 2.5 hours ... she was a fabulous and quick cleaner though, I count do it in that time.

I speak Spanish and Italian and could understand Portuguese the first time I heard it. There’s 72–73% lexical overlap.

I think cleaning half a room is confusing and also to me asking the cleaner to clean the toilet and not the rest of the bathroom is somehow kind of gross. Is the reverse true the other week and she doesn’t clean the loo but cleans the rest of the bathroom? I think for a cleaner who takes pride in their cleaning that would be an unsettling way of doing things.

I think a whole-house clean every fortnight a better arrangement; if you’re having this problem are you sure the cleaner understood what was going on when you offered them the choice of whole house every fortnight or half the house every week?

Good cleaners are like hens teeth. You're mad to make it complex. She will drop you soon as she gets a big enough client base. Just let her clean whole rooms.

Well, I also speak Spanish and Portuguese and find them both different.

A cleaner would usually be SE.

Cleaners seem easy to come by. Most weeks we have cleaners knocking on doors asking for work, so if she's not a good fit, let her go and make other arrangements.
However, you could just simplify the tasks and instructions?

Send her a picture

Thankyou, I will keep it simple like this going forward.

Week 1: kitchen, living room, hallway
Week 2: bedrooms, bathroom

I would use toilet and bathroom interchangeably at times, and mean the room. It would be very rare for clients to literally just want the toilet bowl cleaned, I think. Keeping it simple sounds the way to go.

OP should have the cleaning done how she wants it. Nothing would be complicated or confusing if the cleaner spoke even a bit of English.

I don’t begrudge her not speaking English, she really is lovely and hardworking.

Mainly my issue is if I split the tasks eg upstairs week 1 and downstairs week 2 this is 3hr10 not 3hr30 which I pay her for. Hence I tried to add the toilet bowls, or some other small task, cleaned weekly