To think 10 pounds per hour is very little to receive for cleaning?

[FakeUp]

This seems to be the standard payment as far as I am aware. The work is often physically demanding, especially if someone is cleaning two or three places every day. Let's say someone cleans two places for 30 pounds each Monday to Friday, they earn around 1200 / month (pre tax). This may have been fine in the time when women had a cleaning job to supplement their husband's salary, but now when many women are single or divorced and supporting themselves, it seems like a very small amount to survive on.

ilove I wish I could find a cleaner like you.

And the overwhelming response, from posters who said they are or have been cleaners, was that it’s a shit job and you can’t expect people to care about it. Well I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways

I was on that thread and that wasn’t my response. I certainly don’t expect to “have it both ways” I’m very good at my job, it’s how I feed my children so my reputation is very important. I charge accordingly. I also don’t think it’s a shit job. I like it, I think it’s a very good job with great flexibility and if you want to put the work into it can be a great way to earn a living. Attitude is everything.

And people are having a go at you prequelle because you happen to be the seventy-fourth person to compare the hourly rate of a self-employed domestic cleaner with the hourly equivalent wage of an employed nurse, after it’s been explained twenty times that that’s a meaningless comparison, and you happen to be the one in the way when we snapped. Sorry, but it’s just the luck of the draw.

Boggles Goggles Your post is unbelievable in its naivity. Do you really think domestic cleaning to a high standard isn't hard work?
Maybe you picture some hair netted hag wafting an occasional duster around in a fog of fag smoke. Doing it for 8 hours a day would be exhausting and impossible.
Supply and demand is what determines a good cleaners hourly rate. If the demand wasn't there the cleaner wouldn't be able to charge a decent rate. Why should another woman come in and clean your home for £10 an hour or less? If you want someone to do your dirty work for you then you have to pay. If you don't want to pay then you have to do it yourself! Don't worry about good cleaners pricing themselves out of the market. The demand outstrips the supply. Simple.

I'm a TA and work 1:1 all day every day, with children who have additional support needs. It is physically and mentally exhausting. I receive less than what you're making, and it's the harder job. Sorry.

Yes it is comparable, a lot of people going to an 'office'/ or other employer are zero hours/bank staff, so they aren't neccessarily this magical 'much better off' than a self employed cleaner who still earns £2 more an hour than them, no.

Because they also have either zero or very little entitlement to holiday, sick, maternity, etc.

Plumbers, gas engineers etc are a closer comparison. they really aren’t. Plumbers and gas engineers are skilled qualified professionals. Cleaners aren’t.

Cleaning is very hard work. I would definitely pay £10 per hour for a cleaner and I live in an area where wages are low.

anyone so I'm clearly not alone in my thinking. Sorry you dont like it or agree. Thats just the luck of the drawer too :)

Our cleaner is paid 15 an hour, but no holiday pay. We provide all equipment and she lives very nearby. She also has a part-time job at the local hospital so we know she has had DBS checks done. We work on the assumption that she does declare her cleaning money to the taxman. She has a number of clients in the area.

I have always done my own until recently. Arthritis means that it is now more cost efficient to pay a cleaner and save my energy to work and keep my job at present.

Domestic cleaning really isn’t physically demanding.

I get lots of enquiries from people who need a new cleaner because their existing one can’t physically manage the job anymore. It wears out your body over the years. I regularly need physio on my shoulders. (I pay for that myself too out of my £13/hour) and I can only see that getting worse over the years. I’m not old either. 32. Been cleaning 7 years.

And I'm also a qualified teacher.

Zerrin13

Anyone who can do and wants do their own cleaning is saving a fortune. But it is hard work and there may come a point when the private cleaner becomes a godsend in everyday life.

what is all this assumption about cash in hand undeclared earnings crap?!? I'm a freelance groom, I'm self employed and have been for years. Every single hour of my time and penny earned has been declared, because I'm not a bloody tax dodger! Just because someone is in a job like this doesn't mean they aren't completely above board.

FakeUp

Men's manual work is better paid than women's manual work.

Could that be because not all manual work is the same?

But Dieu, your teaching qualification is irrelevant to being a T.A. As someone pointed out it is more about supply and demand. T.A jobs have many applicants. Good cleaners are in demand and can charge more. My side business is an easier job than being a T.A. But I earn about 3 as much times per hour because the skills are needed.

That's more than the minimum wage. Now, the minimum wage is too low, and even the so-called 'living wage' is too low, but is your argument that cleaning is a job that should be paid more than other minium-wage jobs such as bar work, supermarket checkouts, shelf-stacking?

I guess my yoga instructor doesn’t pay tax either because I pay her cash in hand. Or my hairdresser. Or my mechanic.

Why do so many here assume that cash paid means no tax declaration is made?

It's a constant theme on MN - if you pay cash the recipient must be dodgy. Bollocks - so all cleaners should clean with an izettle in tow? Maybe it's a good idea, but generally not worth the fees if you're not charging way more than a tenner or work p/t.

The unemployed stats would be way higher if it weren't for the many small businesses run for very small money by one person who doesn't get any hol pay, sick pay, pension contributions or even a xmas party to make their tenner look a bit better.

But yet the critics find these 'small people' good enough to use in order to make their own lives easier. But these 'little people' are assumed dodgy?

Take a look at yourselves - you are no better than Victorians who assumed the underclass to be dodgy and needed the workhouse if your paltry payments weren't enough to support them in the slum you felt they deserved to live in.

I'm a TA and work 1:1 all day every day, with children who have additional support needs. It is physically and mentally exhausting. I receive less than what you're making, and it's the harder job. Sorry.

That doesn't mean that cleaners wages should drop, though. All the professions mentioned in this thread should go up dramatically. The problem isn't with what cleaners are paid, but with what nurses, teachers, TAs etc aren't being paid.

Its pointless to compare prices for anything in different parts of the country because incomes and cost of living vary so much.

I pay my cleaner £40 for 3 hours, I get paid £16.90 an hour as a paramedic which is arguably a more responsible job but I certainly don’t begrudge her that amount, she’s self employed so doesn’t get sick pay although I do pay her for holidays and when her Mum was taken ill.

I like to think I’m a pretty good employer having been a cleaner myself back in the day. At least I don’t leave a vibrator out on the bedside table as did one of my clients on a regular basis. I wasn’t going to dust that or move it to dust under it!

But why is it paid than other manual jobs such as bar work or shop work? Because most people don't want to do it that's why!
Many people would work in a bar but they wouldnt be seen dead doing someone else's housework. They think it's beneath them. Not one person on this thread who has a cleaner and pays them decently has complained about it!

Actually, let's look at this again. People seem to be talking about cleaners purely in terms of people who clean private homes for money. Pretty much all businesses also employ cleaners to clean the business premises. What do you think would happen if the business owners went, oh, rather than pay cleaners a living wage, we'll just get the staff to clean the premises as well as doing their jobs?

The contempt and undervaluing applied to domestic cleaners is rooted in misogyny (as are most of the world's problems) - the idea that cleaning the home is something women should do for love and out of duty. Hence all this stuff about it being 'wrong' to pay a cleaner to clean your house (triply so if you are a SAHM), and that the first economy you should make if your income drops is to sack the cleaner and do the work yourself...

All cleaners around here who clean business premises are on minimum wage, not the same as their self employed counter parts (because of obvious reasons I'm assuming), they aren't paid a living wage.

I don't get the sacking point tbh, but I'm probably being a bit dense.