To think £85 a week is extortionate

[Pollypanda]

For a cleaner.

My house is not large, it’s a new build 4 bed with 2 bathrooms and a downstairs loo. We would only need 2 of the bedrooms cleaned as the others are largely unused.

I have been quoted £85 a week for a basic house clean (2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, kitchen, living room and stairs)

AIBU to think this is obscenely high? I was expecting about 40-50.

For context I live in the south, but not London or the south east.

Presumably they pay their employees hourly - if it takes longer one week do you think they will cough up from their own pocket... noooo. So you are paying for a worst case scenario every week I reckon.

If you have someone in on £10 per hour, three hours per day, three days per week. Thats £90.

If you have someone in 3 hours a day though, what the hell are they doing? I mean, I'm not tidy, so when I've had a cleaner, they've also had to pick stuff up/move stuff about - and still 5 hours (spread over 3 days) and she had time to do the dishwasher/put on a load of washing and fold the washing in the dryer as well as clean a 3 bed/2 bath flat.

Out of London
But we pay £15. 4 hours. So £60 a week.
3 bathrooms. 1 bedroom
Very large front room. Dining room. Big kitchen. Utility room.
Hall way floors to mop and Hoover whole bungalow

She doesnt clean the other 3 bedrooms.
The cloak room or the office, out of our request

largish 4 bedroom house, messy kitchen most weeks. I pay £42 for 3 hours to an agency and the house is immaculate - only on Thursdays though!

I got a cleaner in who offered a "deep clean" and it was £80 and it was for a 3 bedroom house, every room tidyed, all floors either hoovered or mopped, windows cleaned, all surfaces cleaned down, the bathroom shined and polished within an inch of its life, and the kitchen fully cleaned and polished.

I was so happy i could have cried that day. 100% worth it.

I get it done once every 3-4 months and its by far the best money i ever spend!!!!

I live in Hampshire. Look for a private cleaner. Take them on with the agreement that if after 2 months either one of you wishes to end the arrangement then you can, no questions asked. Expect to pay £10 per hour. When I was cleaning I put a card in a shop window, and had a phone message from a lady whose house sounds like yours. By the time I'd contacted her she had taken on somebody else, but asked me if she could keep my details in case the other lady didn't work out. A week later she rang to ask if I could clean for her. She said she had paid the other lady, and left the house whilst she cleaned. When she got back she was really disappointed. Her husband , who didn't normally notice the state of the house, came back and said "Didn't the cleaner turn up then?" When I went to the house, 3 days after the other woman had "cleaned", it really didn't look as if it had been cleaned for weeks. I asked Mrs R what she had said when she phoned, and was it embarrassing, and she said "I just told her I didn't need her to clean any more. I didn't have to explain...she knew." I worked for Mrs R for 10 Years until they moved abroad. I did 3 hours, once a week. It was hard work, because they had a huge hall, kitchen, dining room, utility room and conservatory, which was all laminate flooring, so was hoovered and washed every week. I always cleaned all work tops and cupboard fronts, in the kitchen toilet and utility room. Normal dusting polishing hoovering in sitting room and formal dining room, including picture frames and skirting boards, stairs, one bedroom except when they had guests, and two bathrooms. They had several pieces of mirrored furniture in the hall, which was difficult to clean properly. It sounds a lot, and it was, but Mrs R was a joy to work for. I would write the times I started and finished, and she would work out how much she owed me and pay me monthly in cash. I always declared my earnings, by the way. When I had a new client I would estimate the time it would take, but tell them I would tell them how long I needed after 3 visits. Often it took less time after I'd got it clean/ got in a routine.

We pay £10 an hour, 2 hours, twice a week. I can’t do certain stuff myself so as well as cleaning I get a bit of extra help

I think it jut varies tbh. My mum cleaned a 2 bed house, hoovered, mopped, dusted tidied and ironed twice a week for a family and was there 3 - 4 hours each time. She got paid £40.
However, a friend of mine cleans a 5 bed, 3 bath she hoovers, mops, dusts, tidies shes there once a week for 6 hours ang gets paid £85

Take them on with the agreement that if after 2 months either one of you wishes to end the arrangement then you can, no questions asked.

You can do that at any stage. Cleaners don’t make you sign a contract. You don’t need to pre agree it.

I have a cleaner that "takes as long as it takes" for £40 a time. She brings all her own equipment and comes with one or two other people. They have a system and last time they came there were 3 of them working together, so they stayed slightly under an hour. I like this system.
3 bed, 2 bath, + downstairs toilet and they change two of the beds. (I strip them, and they make them up). Such a joy to have it all done at once.

Crazy. Find a local person.

I pay someone £50 a week. She does everything (3 beds, one bath) and all my washing. And she brings all her own stuff.

She is not the world's best cleaner but neither do I demand that. However if I ask her to do something in particular she does it.

If she can't make it one week, she sends a friend or family member instead.

Wow! We’re central London and pay that.... BUT for £85 my —so lovely and looks after us like a mum— cleaner comes twice a week, does around 7 hours in total and takes care of all the tidying, cleaning, laundry, ironing, beds and has a system for all the deep clean jobs like the windows and ovens. We in large 3 bed, 2 bath apartment.

Def get a self employed cleaner to quote you. That’s an insane amount of money

I knew it would be Molly Maid!! You're getting a bargain they quoted me £105 to do a one bedroom flat. I got someone via FB who charges £20

I think that's obscenely high. We pay about £100 a month to an independent company for an hour and a half once a week for a 4 bed new-build. House is always beautifully clean when they've been and we're in the south in a fairly pricey area.

I can't work out how Molly Maid survive considering that their pricing is not exactly competitive. Perhaps they mainly do commercial cleaning.

What?! I used to be a cleaner for a school and a residential home (think care home). The school I was paid in today's equivalent about £8.50 for 2 hours to clean 8 classrooms, including washing art room floors, 2 sets of toilets and a staircase. In the residential home I did 4 bathrooms, 12 bedrooms, a lounge and a large kitchen in 4 hours at about £10 an hour in today's money. And yes, it was thorough. Had to be for infection control. How slowly are these people cleaning??

Way too high

Depends what you want doing. Id expect 4to5 hours which id price at £48 to 60 respectively. If you are unhapph try another firm.

IStandwithPosie To be fair, she pulls out the furniture every week but other jobs like windows, washing down kitchen presses etc are rotated. She does some jobs like front door brasses and fridge clean every second week....but most of the 5 hours per week are taken up with floor cleaning (hoover/mop), surface cleaning/dusting, bathroom cleaning, emptying/filling dishwasher etc And honestly, she does work quickly and efficiently - really good work ethic

That's an unbelievable price!

We have a 4 bed, 3 bathroom house in the SE and always used to have a cleaner (£10ph) that did the lot (not a deep clean, just hoovering, dusting, bathrooms and kitchen) in 2.5 hours (well we paid 2.5, she was often finished in 1.5!)

She left sadly and my new cleaner charges £12ph and told me that she would only be able to do half the house in 2.5 hours so she'd do half one week and the other half the next. 

She was surprised when I told her I didn't really want to live in a house that was only ever 50% clean. For the last two weeks she's done half the house and I've had to come back and do the other half myself.

Something tells me this was her last week...

There’s so much competition in London that £10ph was the going rate for us. As we’ve moved out of London but still south east it’s been more like £12-15ph.

£85 for a full house clean is not expensive.

Tiger Please can you share how you managed to get through all that cleaning so quickly. What am I doing wrong?!? I spend about 10 hours a week cleaning our home. It always feels dirty, I expect because we have pets, but I'd love to learn how to clean faster.

That's interesting. We pay about £13 an hour in London, but my brother and sister in law who live just outside of Godalming pay much more, a set price for the house. It's much more because the demand for cleaners in the area has completely outstripped supply, so it's a seller's market.