To not want to pay £18 an hour for a cleaner

[Nishky]

That is very very expensive surely

[TheSmallPrint]

My elderly mum was being charged £20 an hour through Help the Aged (or whatever they are called now). She has arthritis, osteoporosis and scoliosis (also broke her hip recently) and so needs help. If I lived nearby I'd go and do it for her but I don't. She's scared to go to someone independently in case they steal from her so she pays the extortiante amount to HTA.

[KenAdams]

£10 in the Midlands. They use all my stuff. Never asked them to strip beds, put on washing or anything though, just cleaning.

[LoonvanBoon]

It's 10 years since we employed a cleaner, & she worked for us for 5 years, so I accept rates will have gone up a lot - but that would be very expensive in Yorkshire! I'd never had a cleaner before, & had no idea how to arrange things, so we basically paid her what she asked for, which was only £6 an hour to start with. She was wonderful & we kept putting it up so it was about £8 by the end, though she said that was more than any of her other clients paid - I think we must have just fallen on our feet. Have had a few agency leaflets through the door recently & they only seem to charge about £10 an hour.

[DameDeepRedBetty]

Quint We're not cleaners but dogwalkers, but similar 'keep the home fires burning' role in many household's lives.

John Lewis for preference if you insist on vouchers. However, the bottle of wine and/or chocolates are always well received!

[itsonlyapapermoon]

Before I got pregnant I was a cleaner. I charged $25 p/h. Mind you, wages here in Aus are higher. My mum used to charge $35 p/h because she had her own franchise.

[turbochildren]

as a cleaner I Guess you are not paid for travel time between jobs. To get any sort of wage to live on you need to make 70 pounds a day, no? add travel time and you are working 9-10 hours to make that. Even if they are not as highly trained as Teachers or doctors they still need to make a living. Simple As That.

[samandi]

"Living wage" is about £60 for an eight hour day.

[wigglesrock]

Quint M&S voucher would be my preference . We don't have John Lewis but with M&S I can buy some nice bits of food/ save it for the sales/ kids clothes etc. About £25. I'd be tempted to give a Christmas bonus & a small gift.

[QuintessentialShadows]

M/S is a good point.

I was planning to add it to a box of chocolate.

[YoucancallmeQueenBee]

With regard to the debate about how much jobs are paid, surely some of it is to do with availability.

As long as you are fit & healthy, you can be a cleaner. You might not be very good, but you are capable of doing the job - no qualifications are required. Therefore there will be a high number of people who could clean as a job.

If you have a degree or proven knowledge of history, then you can be a history tutor / teacher. There are quite a few of qualified people like this around but not as many as there might be fit & healthy people with no qualifications.

If you have a medical degree (5 yrs) & have spent the requisite number of years as a junior doc (not sure if it is 2 or 3 yrs) then you can be a doctor. There are significantly less of these people around, so they get to charge higher sums of money for their skills.

Isn't it roughly that straightforward?

[HappyAsEyeAm]

We are outside London but within the M25. I pay £10/hour for our cleaner/ironing lady. We have had her for 5+ years. She does 6 hours a week, and she says it is her best paid job, because it is a 6 hour job (done in one day), and she is only making the journey to our house and then home afterwards, rather than going from 2 hour job to 2 hour job to 2 hour job (and still only getting paid for 6 hours' work).

Quint I always ask her what she'd llike for Christmas, and she always says cash. Not vouchers. Cash. So that's what I give her, with some chocolate and a small food hamper. I am very conscious that we are a great deal better off than she is, and we can afford this.

[fromparistoberlin]

THEN DONT!!!!! should be £8-£13

[Snog]

My job requires a degree + extra qualifications + experience + responsibility, but is a lot easier than cleaning, so I don't see why a cleaner shouldn't earn more per hour than I do.

[YoucancallmeQueenBee]

Snog - easier physically, or easier in terms of time spent training, getting qualifications, experience & responsibility?

PS - what is it you do that is so easy?

[flowery]

YoucancallmeQueenBee yes indeed it is roughly that straightforward. :)

We live in a capitalist economy and salaries are largely set by the market place. Which is why footballers earns ridiculous amounts and cleaners don't earn much.

It's not about deciding whose skills we as a society value, it's not about education levels or responsibility levels, its about how many people there are able/willing to do the job vs how many jobs there are.

Education/qualifications/skills are some factors that reduce the first number which is why jobs that require these pay more.

Basically.

[flowery]

x-posts, how easy a job is is completely irrelevant in deciding the salary, and is also a red herring, because a job that person A finds incredibly easy, person B might find utterly terrifyingly difficult.

[Anatanacoat]

£12.50ph for ours and she is fantastic. But she's a housekeeper, really, that we borrow from a friend for an hour a week.

Because she's a housekeeper, as well as cleaning she habitually takes things to the charity shop, picks up parcels and prescriptions, does shopping, the recycling, mends things, replaces batteries...I love our cleaner! So worth it.

[kalougri]

Hmmm, thinking it was a waste of time training for 2 years to be a child carer. I'd be way better of being cleaner! (not really, love my job, but woah, the money is in cleaning it seems)

[kalougri]

Off, not of!

[Objection]

kalougri - I feel that way sometimes! I've had to pass many qualifications and jump through a lot of hoops to be a Nanny and sometimes I think I should just jack it all in and be a cleaner. Even with the travelling it seems a lot of rates are significantly higher than my Nanny rate.

And dare I say it, its an easier job too ducks for cover

[Opalite]

kalougri... it's really not. The hours aren't guaranteed!

[Opalite]

I was a mobile cleaner for a very long time and was poorer than I am now without a job!

[polyhymnia]

£12.50 an hour, in affluent London suburb. Had her for ages and she does all the ironing. Is worth it to me.

I also give an M and S token at Christmas, plus her favourite scented candle.

[PublicEnemyNumeroUno]

If one of my clients was going to give me a voucher I'd prefer an Amazon
Voucher, just because then you're not resigned to just one shop and I'm addicted to amazon at the minute

But in all honesty I'd just be over the moon with any type of gift, even if the voucher was for a shop I'm not a fan of M&S I'd still be greatful and go and treat myself to something nice with it.

:)

[Nishky]

Well, we did- I am so happy we did.

I thought about the comments people made about the expenses involved in running a company like this and I like the fact that the company brings all their own stuff. It is like a weight lifted from my shoulders and they have only been twice!!