Cleaner Price! AIBU?

[Wyntersdiary]

So i was looking for quote for a cleaner and most of them came back at what i thought it would be, between 10 - 15 PH except one... £25 PER HOUR for just 1 person! i couldnt believe it , i wish i could get paid £25 an hour to clean someones house.

End of tenancy clean ... £95 for 2 hours!!!

This is all for just cleaning a bathroom, lounge and kitchen .. in a small flat as i said bedrooms didnt need doing... im shocked.

An end-of-tenancy clean-up will include things like thoroughly cleaning the oven, fridge, windows, pots and pans, etc.

It's more thorough and time consuming than usual weekly cleaning.

Its not a lot. My Henry died the other week. I appreciate that this is a rare occurrence but at 109 quid to replace goodness knows how I would have replaced it with the 10p/h that a high percentage of mumsnet seems to think we are worth paying.

i wish i could get paid £25 an hour to clean someones house.

What's stopping you then?

YANBU - it's a crazy price when you think about it, if she works 37.5 hours per week it's the thick end of £50k per year! Reining it in a bit, £10 an hour would be fairer, just under £20k per year.

You aren't factoring in:

Travel time between jobs
Time on admin
Insurance costs
Travel costs
Supplies, materials & equipment
Accountancy costs
Office/Admin costs

No paid holidays, no paid sick time, no pension, etc.

The bare minimum any self employed person should charge is double the minimum wage, that usually just about covers the loss of employment benefits and the additional time/costs of running a business.

YABU. You have the choice to go elsewhere if you don't like her price, but it's U to criticise her price.

We have a cleaner who is nearer to £25 an hour than £12. I'm fine paying her slightly higher price because a) she is amazing and b) I think I'd fall apart without her. You pay what you can afford but if people are willing to pay her prices she must be worth it.

YANBU - it's a crazy price when you think about it, if she works 37.5 hours per week it's the thick end of £50k per year! Reining it in a bit, £10 an hour would be fairer, just under £20k per year.

FAIR?!?

so we are all to accept to work for minimum wage, are we?
You refuse any payrise or promotion to keep things "fair", do you?

If she wants to charge £100, it's a free country.
If some wealthy client think it's a fair price, good for them both.

It's a much more sensible attitude to try to start with a price you are happy with, than imposing pay increase to clients within a few months.

The jealousy and poverty competition on MN from some people is always entertaining..

O/T but do you clean round before the cleaner comes?? Or do you just leave everything as it is and she cleans round it or moves it?

Well said, @Northernsoullover!

A cleaner in my area was charging £25 a year or more ago, I bet she's charging more now. And at £25ph, she still had a waiting list of clients who wanted her.

And as for @contrmary, apart from the fact that your calculation is deeply flawed, doesn't account for travel time, mileage and other costs, let alone the 28 days a year she'd get paid for NOT working if she was an employee, why shouldn't a cleaner get £50k a year for clearing up other people's shit?

I wouldn't do it for £100k a year, I bloody hate cleaning.

DP used to work for a payroll bureau that specialised in paying domestic staff. One of his clients paid a housekeeper £60k a year, she got a 3-bed house on their country estate to live in, gratis, and she didn't even have to do any cleaning. Now that sounds like my sort of job!

Cleaners (good ones!) are like gold dust! Only yesterday ,a thread about how one ladies DH took no pleasure in any household tasks . Everyone said the didnt either ! Most people dread H/W so it seems she is probably in demand ATM! Are you in London? There may be cheaper cleaners you could try .

Good for her, do it yourself if you don't like it!

I pay my cleaner 12e an hour, she comes every two weeks for 5 hours so 60e a go. She does an amazing job and the house is spotless when I come home, she is actually going back to her home country soon after coming to me for 13 years. Am devastated. I work very long hours and also hate cleaning so she is worth her wait in gold to me. I would give her a present every xmas and she would also come for deep clean every so often plus windows. Have had had cover when she was on maternity and they were not a patch on her. My partner who is a builder also uses here for deep cleans of new builds or end of tenancy cleans . As people say you can pay as much or as little as you want. Its hard manual labour. However the old saying is you pay peanuts you get monkeys

YANBU - it's a crazy price when you think about it, if she works 37.5 hours per week it's the thick end of £50k per year!

You have never been self employed, if you think that a 37.5 hour working week would mean you get paid for every hour. If you were cleaning for 37.5 hours, you would probably be working closer to 60.

Good luck to her I'm sure it's a thankless task. If she can get £25 ph then she should. People who don't like it can clean up after themselves.

I work as a cleaner and despite being small and fit, there's no way I could clean for 38 hours a week. I'd be on the floor. Good cleaners work very hard, its strenuous. In order to do an excellent job I can do 5 hours max a day. There are also overheads and the logistics of travelling to homes.

It gets boring when people say I wish I was earning that sort of money . Do it then ..

smiley I can't manage more than 5 hours per day either. I'm fairly fit too. One of my clients has me 3 hours in their 3 bed 6 bedroom house. When I get home I'm shattered.

YANBU - it's a crazy price when you think about it, if she works 37.5 hours per week it's the thick end of £50k per year! Reining it in a bit, £10 an hour would be fairer, just under £20k per year.

For starters few cleaners are working 37.5 hours per week. Unless they are employed in one home for the entirety of the week. I have 13 clients on my books. I manage 30 hours a week. The minimum time taken to get to any of them from my home or from one to the other is 10 minutes. Others it takes 20. All that travel time eats into your chargeable hours. Also it is an incredibly physical job. 30 hours is my absolute limit. I’m exhausted and I’m having some real problems with my shoulders now after only 8 years cleaning to the extent that I’m planning to retrain in something desk based. Then take out your insurance, travel costs, products, tax and NI and your nowhere near £50k. Not that anyone shouldn’t be earning 50k just because they aren’t professionally qualified.

Agree NorthernSoul I think people underestimate how physical it is. In the summer, I'm literally sweating all day

This is one of the reasons quite a few cleaners are struggling wearing masks. It's like going for a run with a mask on.

Sorry about your shoulders smallsteps. I have issues with my back quite a lot for similar reasons. I've put quite a lot of effort lately into researching and adopting all the correct lifting and moving postures which is helping a bit. One of my clients has incredibly heavy mattresses that need lifting which has caused it I think.

I wouldn't be surprised if some cleaners used a sort of sliding scale for charges. The smaller the property the higher the equivalent hourly rate...

It's much easier to do 2 larger houses a day at 2 hours each, than do 4 small flats at 1 hour each, due to travel time between each.

A good cleaner is absolutely worth their weight in gold though - I've had some rubbish ones over the years and my current one is great. She manages to plump up sofas so they're just like new. I could spend an hour trying to do it and fail to achieve even half of the effect. Same with limescaley shower screens.

I realised how much I value and rely on her during the lockdown when I had to back to doing my own cleaning (shock horror!).

@SmileyClare

Sorry about your shoulders smallsteps. I have issues with my back quite a lot for similar reasons. I've put quite a lot of effort lately into researching and adopting all the correct lifting and moving postures which is helping a bit. One of my clients has incredibly heavy mattresses that need lifting which has caused it I think.

Yes mattresses are a killer! I’ve been doing lots of yoga to try and help my shoulders and I’ve had physio too. I’ve noticed an improvement since I’ve been off work with the covid pandemic so it’s really made it clear that it’s work that’s causing the issues.

You're right Charming I've worked for one quite elderly lady for years now and haven't the heart to put up my charges from £10 an hour! I recently took on a 2hour slot which I'm charging £15 ph for because it's a long walk to get to.I was prepared to go lower if the customer quibbled over my rate but she seemed very happy with it.

If she's good at her job and people are willing to pay that price, good on her. It's very hard to find a great cleaner, especially if you have high standards. I think it's disgusting that some people only pay their cleaners £10 an hour. People expect so much for nothing.

For a regular weekly cleaner that is very expensive and you could definitely get someone good for much less. But an end of tenancy clean is a different beast entirely, with a different market and expectations.

smiley & small I'm retraining. I've done this for 10 years and I don't think I have another 10 in me. IF by some miracle a cleaner were earning 50k that would be great but the reality is that its mainly women that are not wealthy and are unlikely to be able to carry on working in this field up until the retirement age. That's why these threads really rile me. Don't begrudge your cleaners a decent wage.