To say cleaning is hard work?

[Iwantafuckingbreak]

I'm a cleaner, I work for myself and I've just finished for the day. I only worked 8-3.30 today but I am dead! I didnt have time for a break and only about 10 minutes of that was travel time. Lugging around hetty, up and down stairs and cleaning houses with a million bathrooms. My knee is buggered, my back hurts like hell and I'm just knackered. But I still get people make comments about how it's only cleaning or get clients with ridiculously unrealistic expectations.

I had one lady who only had me once because I said it was impossible to clean her 4 bed house top to bottom in 1 hour a week. I only agreed to go for 1 hour because she said she only wanted her floors doing because she had a bad back, my normal minimum is 2. When I got there she gave me a massive list to complete in 1 hour and then got arsey when I couldnt do it all.

Luckily the majority of my clients are lovely and I understand if they did their own cleaning I would have no work! But some people only have me 2 hours a fortnight or something like that and dont lift a finger between visits. Sometimes this is ok but one lady didnt even hoover.. or anything for that matter in 4 months during lockdown. It took me pretty much 4 hours just to Hoover her house when I came back! (It is a big house to be fair) but come on!

Obviously it goes without saying I am grateful for the work ... especially since my partner was made redundant. I also hope to grow my business in the long run but right now I'm slogging my guts out everyday and the "but it's only cleaning" comments piss me off! Along with clients who have no idea how long it takes to clean things properly!

Cleaning is hugely hard work, especially if you're doing a really good deep clean!

As I'm getting older it becomes harder too, I deep cleaned my bathroom last week and my back was in agony after leaning over the bath to scrub it.

And cleaners will have to deal with awkward/demanding clients on top of that.

I think most sensible people understand how full on cleaning work can be (and how necessary - especially in the current climate). Unfortunately you get a small minority who don't understand - but they'd likely be the first ones to kick off if cleaners stopped doing their houses/workplace/public spaces!

Cleaning is hard work. I don’t think I do a great job cleaning my own home to be honest - I do a decent job but it would take me ages to get an excellent finish.

I can’t stand people who think jobs like cleaning, retail etc are not “hard work”. I still shudder when I think of the people who used to be mean or rude to me when I worked in a shop. Also, some people use ‘working hard’ as a euphemism for earning a lot of money. There are plenty of low paid jobs that are a lot of hard work but some don’t see it.

@TiredSloth - Cleaners are amazing.

Some are, some aren't. My current one is amazing but I have had some mediocre or poor ones in the past.

Cleaning is hard physical constant work

Yanbu at all. Doing a really good nooks and crannies clean takes a long time as well. It took me probably about 4- 5 hours over the course of last week to fully deep clean my kitchen and oven.

No! YANBU, cleaning my own flat is tiring let alone doing it for a living!

Fucking exhausting

I avoid where possible

Yes it's hard and relentless , no rest at all. I did it for a while and hated it ..

Hoovering with a bstrd henry used to leave me sweating. Probably the best exercise I got, when I could face it. (We got a cordless, I didn't just give up!) YANBU. I hate it. It feels like such a waste of time, especially being a person for whom everything takes for ever!

@Iwantafuckingbreak.
It's incredibly hard work and I speak as a nurse.
When I was more clinical we were expected to clean the patient contact equipment and human liquid spills but cleaners did the big back breaking cleans.