How many hours to clean a small 3BHK house?

[ComfortFoodCorner]

Hi, my house is a small 3bhk house, 1 open plan kitchen/living room and a lounge. 1 bath and 1 wc. We only ever use the 2 bedrooms, and the 3rd one is hardly used. I have a non-shedding doodle. Though there is no dog hair in the house, the house gets a bit dirty on muddy days.

The previous cleaner I had cleans the whole house (very rough clean) in 3 hours. Then I have this current cleaner, she does good cleaning (although not thorough, bit better than the last one). She charges hourly and she cleans slowly to make more hours. I arranged in such a way that she only comes once in 2 weeks(as she comes from far), and spends 4-5 hours cleaning. She demands at least 6 hours and her charges are £12.50. This would add up to £75 every 2 weeks. I feel this is too high for a small 3bhk. I even offered her only to clean 2 bedrooms at a time and on rota basis. She says still she would want 6 hours and she repeatedly quoted that my house is very dirty because of the dog. Not sure what's the right thing to do. I really like her. I have tried 3 cleaners and she is the best so far. I am very comfortable to have her around the house. And I like her work.

Hmm what are charges like locally? Round here is £20 an hour - £12.50 is really not enough so although she should be upping her rates rather than charging for extra hours, I think overall it's still a good deal. Especially as your previous cleaner took 3 hours and didn't even do it properly.

Ultimately your options are accept it or look elsewhere, if you think you'll find a cleaner who will do it for less hours and still do a good job then go for it. If not it's frustrating, but just one of those things.

What’s 3bhk? I can work out three bedrooms…

Yup only clicked to find out what 3BHK means!

Me too. Maybe the k is for kitchen? But can’t work out the h.

Hall?

She is taking the piss, I have a much larger area to clean and mine takes 5 hours including changing 3 sets of bedding and an extra job a week such as cleaning skirting boards or the fridge.

THank you all for your replies..

Lol.. 3BHK stands for 3 Bedrooms, Hall, Kitchen. Sorry for not being clear...

I paid £10 an hour to the previous cleaner and provided £4 on top for travel expense. So it roughly comes around £11/hour. My current cleaner too charged £11 before, but today she said it has to be £12.50 plus she needs 6 hours.

Our arrangement was like this: As my previous cleaner did 3 hours rough cleaning, I asked her to take 5 hours, but every time she comes in she must do one task extra. Like cleaning the fridge, or bottom of the sofa, or behind TV (hard areas to clean which she normally doesnt do) or bathroom tiles (not hard to clean but she never does that). But not even once she was able to pick up one of these tasks on top of the whole house clean. One time I requested her to clean the fridge she had to leave one of the bedrooms untouched.

£11 an hour is extremely low. I suspect that’s the root of your problem

£11 ph? Regardless of your weird abbreviation we pay £18

£11 per hour is less than minimum wage so I’m not surprised the price has gone up.

I would have thought 4 hours should be plenty for a basic clean, though, unless you’re particularly messy / dirty or have a lot of bathrooms.

It's the rota of jobs - they can never get their heads round that. Mine does the basics - floors, bogs and bathrooms, sirface dusting and the ironing. She does six hours in two lots of three but it's a somewhat larger house. Twice a year she does six hours and I have a day off and we have a deeper clean.

Where do you live to be paying 12.50ph or less? I pay £17.50.

Seems very cheap

Where do you live

£16/20 here

I live in Birmingham. £11 or £12 is the norm here. On top of it, i pay the travel charges, or sometimes pick/drop the cleaner from their home.
To clarify, as she cleans slow and says she needed the time, we agreed fixed rate . I pay £60 for the whole house and she can take her time to clean. She even takes half hour break in between and i provide lunch or snacks based on how hungry she is.

i didn’t give all these details before as i mainly wanted to know generally how long it takes to clean a small 3bedroom house. She says 6 hours, but it feels like a lot. I only need basic cleaning, that’s what she does, she doesn’t address all nooks and corners…

£60 sounds reasonable to me.

it’s not weird, you just haven’t heard that abbreviation before

I would have thought 3/4 tops for a 3bed house

Not 6

She is slow and low

But if that's the average price then find someone who is faster and you will pay £33/44 a week

I have no carpets in home and all tiled. So while carpet requires only hoovering, tiles require sweeping and mopping. May be that’s why she takes more time. I have talked to her and raised the pay to £75.

£11 an hour is illegal. It is exploitation.

Surely you must be aware that NMW is £11.44 soon to be rising to £12.21 and that's for employees who receive holiday pay, employer pension contributions and sick pay so as an absolute minimum you'd expect to pay a self employed person about £15 an hour (but not pay for travel).

Plus as a SE person your cleaner is free to charge what she likes and then it's up to her clients whether they take on their services. If she charges to much, she won't get any work. But I'd be astonished if she can't find people willing to pay more than £11/12 ph. Many people would expect to pay near double that for a reliable cleaner. Unless she's not very good or slow for what she achieves. But that's a separate issue really.

I used to have a decent cleaner that did my 3 bed v well in 2 hours. I have a bigger house now and my cleaner gets through living, kitchen, dining 2 bedroom, 2 bathrooms in 3 hours.

You need to pay more. I'm surprised that's the norm for Birmingham.

Is it legal to be paying below minimum wage? It feels exploitative

Pay more and get someone more efficient. I had a five bed/three reception/three bath house and one woman, who trained at a hotel, could do a good clean in four hours plus have time to go through a kitchen cupboard. Another, who never took a break and was always moving, was very thorough but never got the whole house done - in fact it would have taken her closer to six hours. I guess she was moving but not that efficient.
This woman is being ridiculous in a house half the size of my old one but taking up six hours?? Too much.

@ComfortFoodCorner thats cheap .
Also f course a house needs longer time spent if it’s not a weekly/regular clean .
This is how people end up complaining about cleaners.

It £37.50 a week broken down for three hours weekly.

That’s cheap

You need a cleaner that charges by the job not the hour. This one is taking the piss. Mine does a small three bedroom house in two hours, although it's a pretty basic clean though but that's all I want.

It's not, I pay £26/h 😧