Cleaners

[FuckingFabulous]

The property-

House which has had building work done
Dog and cats and kids in residence
4 bedrooms (one double, three single)
One main bathroom, one en suite, one downstairs toilet
Kitchen and utility
Lounge and family room

The situation-

Messy fucking everything. Oldest with debilitating condition so no chores 90% of the time. Second with ADHD so is either incredibly neat if motivated or incredibly messy. 5 year old, typically 5. Husband with ADHD, pure chaotic, loves it clean and tidy, does not want to be the one to get it that way. Dog, masses of hair shedding filth machine. Cats, fairly clean, no litter trays, slight fur shedding. Me. Poor fucking me trying to manage everyone and everything and drowning in it all. Decluttering like mad.

The question-

A cleaner. I should like one. It's obvious I can't rely on DC or DH to do this and I am not a hero. I cannot do all of this and maintain my sanity. Some of you can- bravo and medals all round. I am not that person. I know my limitations, and right now I'm extremely happy to outsource and have some goddamn space to breathe. But what to expect and where to start? Do I hire someone to firstly deep clean and then come once a week? Twice? Thrice? How much should I pay for a decent job? I live in the south west of England, not looking to pay a pittance but certainly not looking to pay Ritz prices for smartprice quality, and some of the cleaner threads on here make me nervous!

Have you contacted any cleaning agencies?

They should be able to answer your questions, even if you don't decide to go through an agency.

Try and find a self employed cleaner, then talk to them about what they can realistically do in 2 hours a week.

If they can do a good clean in bathroom, ensuite, downstairs toilet, hall, stairs, landing, and kitchen, then you will know those most important places have a good clean every week.
After the first couple of weeks she will get them done in a quicker time and might be able to add one living room to her list.

This gives you the time free to tackle the bedrooms with your dc, or choose to shut the door on them, but you have cleanliness and calm in one living room to live your life in.

We pay £20 for 2hours, once a week. (Midlands)

I contacted two online, one said they'd need to send two cleaners to deep clean and quoted about £400 which I felt was a bit much.... and the other didn't reply.

I was hoping some cleaners or people with cleaners would have some advice. Getting a cleaner seems to be seen as snobbish or shameful in my family so I think I'm a little nervous to call someone and explain.

The problem is that cleaners usually clean things, not tidy things. The tidying is actually often the thing that takes more work. Most cleaners don’t really do tidying and wouldn’t clean a room that is too untidy. If a cleaner did do tidying for you, you’d be forever wondering where things were anyway.

By all means get a cleaner, but be aware that of a cleaner comes on a certain day every week that means you have to have the whole house tidy on that day so they can clean it!

@Kite22

Try and find a self employed cleaner, then talk to them about what they can realistically do in 2 hours a week.

If they can do a good clean in bathroom, ensuite, downstairs toilet, hall, stairs, landing, and kitchen, then you will know those most important places have a good clean every week.
After the first couple of weeks she will get them done in a quicker time and might be able to add one living room to her list.

This gives you the time free to tackle the bedrooms with your dc, or choose to shut the door on them, but you have cleanliness and calm in one living room to live your life in.

We pay £20 for 2hours, once a week. (Midlands)

Very helpful, thank you! Do you provide the materials or is that a no-no now because of Covid?

@DoNotGetADog

The problem is that cleaners usually clean things, not tidy things. The tidying is actually often the thing that takes more work. Most cleaners don’t really do tidying and wouldn’t clean a room that is too untidy. If a cleaner did do tidying for you, you’d be forever wondering where things were anyway.

By all means get a cleaner, but be aware that of a cleaner comes on a certain day every week that means you have to have the whole house tidy on that day so they can clean it!

Good point. I can have things tidy if I can get rid of about 25% of the stuff in this house! It's just clutter. There's no need for any of it. DH has got a massive box of all of his sibling's school work. Sibling is in their 40s, emigrated and left all this in DH's charge. I'd be saving a few key pieces, mailing them to him and tipping the rest. It's been a decade, he's not coming back for them. DH is aghast at the thought.

I’m a cleaner. M I would recommend a deep clean first for sure, get it all spotless, but also, and this is overlooked a lot, if you can get a company who also organises stuff too and can advise you on what type of storage to buy, even better can work alongside you to decide what to get rid of etc. Then weekly cleans. Sounds like 3-4 hours a week might be needed initially with 3 hours once into an established routine. Not sure what prices are where you are. I would expect to pay about £15 per person hour.

I think as the above poster said you need someone to help you declutter first. Then clean. Realistically for your house minimum 3 hours per week. I am really neat DH is not, but we have a 4 bed and cleaner comes 3 hours per week; 4 hours every so often to do deeper clean.

We don't have a cleaner at the moment (still renovating new house) but we used to at old house once a fortnight. Three double beds, one large bathroom, one large living room, one large kitchen-diner, hallway and stairs (3 storeys). 3 hours x £18.95 per hour. I think the first clean was 4 hours. Didn't include doing bins, inside oven or fridge, windows and no laundry/bedding related chores. No deep cleaning, just a wipe down/dust/polish/hoover carpets and mop hard floors.

I would guess a house your size would need 5 hours for initial clean and 4 hours thereafter.

BUT it strikes me that the main issue for you is clutter/mess. Cleaners don't usually "tidy" not least because they don't know where stuff goes. The move stuff around to clean but the issue with that is that it uses valuable cleaning time. So to get the benefit your house needs to be fairly tidy when cleaner arrives. I wonder if you need someone more akin to a "housekeeper" who will need a bit of training and will no doubt be more expensive. My wealthy next door neighbours have a daily housekeeper and she does everything - tidying, chucking out of date food from fridge and cupboards, emptying bins, making and changing beds etc. No idea what they pay her!

We are in South East.

£20 for two hours is very cheap.

We've just started with some new cleaners. We pay £20 per hour. We had a deep clean done a few weeks ago - 3 people, 4 hours (so 12 hours in total) - they moved furniture and cleaned behind and under it and did all the windows and blinds.

They will now be coming fortnightly until they have some more availability and then we will have them weekly.

The main thing to do is a massive declutter and tidy. They won't tidy for you. That sounds like your overall problem if your DH won't get rid of a pile of crap that's over a decade old and doesn't even belong to him.

We have 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom

Cleaner comes once per week for 2.5 hours, cost £35

She does a lot - cleans, irons, puts ironing away, washes bedding, hangs it up, changes sheets and takes out all recycling and bins. We do v little between visits, apart from laundry and washing dishes

But I think the only reason she can do so much in quite a short time is that we're a tidy family. Most surfaces are clear, so eg to dust a mantelpiece, she only has to lift one vase

One benefit of having a cleaner is that it forces you to do the tidying. Our cleaner comes once a fortnight and I spend 2-3 hours tidying for them coming. Once you've tidied, the reward is then everything being beautifully clean with no effort on your part.

In your shoes, I'd book a cleaner for Saturday afternoons for 4-5 hours once a fortnight. That gives you a chance to put a rocket up DH's backside to get him to help you tidy up for the cleaner coming. I'd ask older DC to do their room if they can as then the cleaner can clean it for them, otherwise their room won't be cleaned. You and DH share the rest of the rooms. After you've tidied as a family in the morning, you then waltz out of the house for a lovely family afternoon and come back to a sparkling clean house for Saturday evening and Sunday.

I don't think you need a cleaner at the moment - you need a professional organising/decluttering service to come in and help you get the "stuff" under control.

Cleaners won't clean messy rooms, so you need to get the mess, stuff and organisational issues under control before spending money on a cleaner who can't do their jobs properly.

Once you've got the place tidy and organised (and decluttered) then you can pay for weekly clean.

I’m looking into getting someone to help us with general tidiness rather than actual cleaning

It’s putting things away and ironing etc we struggle with

@myadhdusername

I’m looking into getting someone to help us with general tidiness rather than actual cleaning

It’s putting things away and ironing etc we struggle with

I struggle with doing it all on my own with everything else as well.

And as a Pp said about putting a rocket up DH's arse- I honestly don't know what would. It's 4pm on Sunday and this weekend he's managed to order a dishwasher and buy himself a tool bag that will fit approx 5% of his tools. Even though he was meant to be prepping and sanding and then papering a wall I've been waiting for him to do for two months. I'm so fucking exasperated with him

People say cleaners won’t clean round messy rooms. That’s maybe true generally. Personally I tidy and clean. There’s no way I will Hoover a floor around laundry and toys and leave the floor cluttered. Yes, tidying takes longer but I do an assessment when I arrive and decide which rooms I think will be beneficial for the family to have completely clean and tidy, and which they can cope with being left untouched until the next visit. I always keep in touch with clients and explain this if I don’t manage to get the whole house done. No one has ever been upset that I didn’t manage to do a certain room on one visit if I made the rest of the rooms look “WOW”.

Talk to the prospective cleaners OP and see what they are prepared to do. I pretty much do whatever is asked of me apart from inside ovens (because they’re horrible, and messy and a pro oven cleaner can charge upwards of £40 for less than an hours work- I’m not doing that for £13)

If find a self employed cleaner and get her in for 4 hours or so a week to start, the idea being she spends 1-2 hours really deep cleaning one area like the kitchen, or a family bathroom, then spends the rest whizzing round bathrooms/hoovering etc.

Mine comes for 3 hours a week. My house is pretty big and started out quite clean (we got her as soon as we bought it and the previous owner left it immaculate!) but each week she focuses on one area then done what she can with the rest of the time. This week I found her cleaning the outside of the kitchen window as it was filthy and bugging her!! We have 5 beds and 5 loos so she doesn't get round everything every week, just focuses on the most impactful bits and makes sure she does floors and bathrooms. For instance there is a guest room and reception room that are rarely used so she rarely even goes in. That's fine by me!

Basically find someone with common sense. I love mine. I pay £15/hour in Northern Ireland... she uses all her own stuff including bringing her hoover.

Also could DH take all the kids out for 2 hours+ a week (send them all off at the cinema?!) so you could declutter a room at a time?

And actually my cleaner will tidy if I don't get round to it. She does dishes too, and occasionally has hung up a wash. Obviously it cuts into cleaning time!

I feel his pain OP! And yours

One benefit of having a cleaner is that it forces you to do the tidying.

This is what I found when I had dc at home, and we first got a cleaner. It meant I couldn't procrastinate - I (we) had to get it tidy enough for her to come and clean. It is then just marvellous to come in to a house that is clean.

People say cleaners won’t clean round messy rooms. That’s maybe true generally. Personally I tidy and clean. There’s no way I will Hoover a floor around laundry and toys and leave the floor cluttered. Yes, tidying takes longer but I do an assessment when I arrive and decide which rooms I think will be beneficial for the family to have completely clean and tidy, and which they can cope with being left untouched until the next visit.

and
And actually my cleaner will tidy if I don't get round to it. She does dishes too, and occasionally has hung up a wash. Obviously it cuts into cleaning time!

This is what my cleaner will do - use common sense rather than sticking to a specific list. Sometimes (if that is what I want) she will tidy an area. Sometimes should will iron (though we rarely want that). Her thinking is, she is here, and it doesn't really matter to her what she is doing for the time she is being paid to be in our house. She is fab. She will do what I want doing week by week, or, when I'm not there or if I don't have any requests, will use the time with something she notices, or thinks she hasn't done for a while.

Do you provide the details or is that a no no now because of COVID?
My cleaner has always preferred to use her own things - long before COVID