To think £90 a week is insane for a cleaner

[whyohwhy25]

Just had a quote for a weekly clean from a cleaner who had previously done a deep clean on my house. £90 a week!

To be fair my house is odd and has some extra rooms as the previous owners extended it a lot (5 bedrooms (1 with en suite), 1 bathroom, 1 shower room, 2 lounges, kitchen/diner, home office and playroom.). It’s not a mansion though! It’s just a semi.

This cleaner has a PA and her own company, I think she must be pretty high end, I mean she must be charging a bit extra to cover the PA? Surely that’s too much?

How many hours is that for?

It depends, how many hours are you talking?

I’m not sure actually, I just got a quote through. I’ll check.

How many hours?

How many hours is that?
By PA do you mean another person who cleans with her - I'm confused.
£90 would be much more than I would pay.
Perhaps you need an hourly rate cleaner, and agree which rooms are weekly / fortnightly / monthly?

I’m guessing 6 hours?

I’m confused by the PA as well. When she did the deep clean she had another person with her. But the PA is someone else who sends emails and sends out invoices etc.

That does sound excessive for a cleaner but if she's doing say 2 days maybe that's normal?
Never had a cleaner, I'm more the person who is the cleaner.

Yes that sounds like a lot. Even if they were doing 6 hours (which would be the upper end of what most people have in a week) that's £15 an hour which is high. Are you in London?

I pay my cleaner £10/hour. I have a big house and she does 4 hours. But she never gets the whole house done so she trades off one week this room next week that room (always goes kitchen and living room though. So I think if she did six hours she’d get it all done and that would be £60.

It looks like it’s a limited company so I think I’d be better off with an hourly rate cleaner, I went with this one as she was recommended by my local FB group, she did do a very good deep clean, but £90 a week just seems like such a lot of money.

I’m in the south-east. I used to be a cleaner too which is why I’m a bit gobsmacked I think!

Your house has 13 rooms. That's enormous. About 7 hours of work. £90 sounds right for the amount of hours. Would I pay £90 for cleaning though? Heck no!

My house has 5 rooms and costs £30 for cleaning.

It's a lot for two hours a week, but if she thinks your house needs 5/6 hours then it's not too bad

That’s a lot. At £10-12 an hour, I would expect a cleaner to charge about £40-50 for a really good weekly clean. I wouldn’t pay that (I’d clean it myself) but £90 is a lot unless you gave her a list of more than the usual jobs.

It's really impossible to say without knowing how many hours its for, isn't it? I mean, if it's to come 8 hours a day monday to friday, £90 is very cheap.

I don’t think it sounds excessive for the size of the house. Why not have it done once every 2 weeks

Is that £90 to clean it however long it takes (eg. all day)? Or is she going to take 3 hours and charges £30/hour. Or does she charge £15/hour and plans on taking 6 hours to do it?

Sounds an awful lot. I would imagine going rate for cleaners is something like £10-15/hour depending upon where you live (not that I have one). Also, you need to be the person saying, "I need 3 hours cleaning a week, what does that cost per hour, this is what I need doing, is that achievable?".

Molly Maid used to charge a fee to clean, they wouldn't say a set time of cleaning. They charged over £40 for 2 of them. They were in and out in just over 20 minutes (bedroom, ensuite, lounge, kitchen/diner, cloakroom, hall, stairs etc). I cancelled them.

It’s definitely only 1 day. Waiting to hear how many hours.

I'm an hourly rate sole trader who charges 14p/h. I take my minimum wage from that and the rest goes for my insurance, mileage, annual leave and products. Whoever charges 10 p/h is either working cash in hand (this is actually quite rare) or undercharging (usually the case) so if you pay your cleaner 10p/h do the decent thing and up it to at least 12

Given the going rate seems to be around 10 an hour you'd be expecting 9 hours of cleaning each week. Two hours a day plus one at the weekend, or one day of full blitz. Seems on the high side. Clarify how many hours this is for.

Donajimena
I totally agree. It's hard physical work, there's no sick pay or holiday pay and you need insurance. Under £12/hour is exploitative

I’m currently part time self employed and I charge £24/hour. I’m looking to up my hours which is why I wanted to get a cleaner, but if she charges £30/hr then I’ll be losing money and might as well not work more.

My cleaner charges £12.50 an hour and I have her for two hours. She doesn’t do the whole house though, as there are two bedrooms we don’t use. So in two hours she does two bedrooms, two bathrooms, lounge, large kitchen/diner/ conservatory.

I think it sounds about right. We have a similar size house (2 more bedrooms) and we pay £60 a week, but he doesn't do half of the bedrooms (kids do their own) and doesn't do everything every week.