How long does it take to clean a 3 bed house?

[Sparklingred]

We’ve got a standard 3-bed, 2-bath house with a kitchen extension, and I’m just wondering how long a professional cleaner would usually take to do a regular clean.

We do have a dog, but he’s only allowed on the hard floors downstairs, so I appreciate vacuuming might take a bit more time. That said, I always make sure the place is tidy before the cleaner comes—dishes done, toys put away, nothing left out—so she’s not spending time picking up after us. We’re pretty clean overall and try to keep on top of things, so it’s never a huge mess.

I’m just trying to figure out if my expectations are unrealistic.

Depends what you want - ours does all floors, cleans the bathroom and kitchen and dusts throughout. She does the gad cooker top too. 2 hours per fortnight.

She doesn't change beds or do the windows etc so that would be more time

It's an open book really as to how much time you'll need.

Not all cleaners charge by the hour, some charge by the house.

3-4 hours, I would say.

Ours does roughly this type of house of 175msq plus wash / iron bed linen in c6hrs

No way 3-4 hours!

2 hours. I have a large 4 bed with 3 bathrooms & 2 cats, my cleaners do 3h a week.

Mine comes for 3 hours fortnightly. I've only got one bathroom and two cats. She cleans throughout, hoovers, mops, and also changes the bed, does two loads of washing, pegs it out, takes it in and puts clothes away.

I used to have an amazing cleaner who came to a similar sized house for 3hrs. She did all bathrooms (master, ensuite and downstairs loo), hoovered through, mopped hard floors downstairs, dusting all through and would find time for extras like cupboard fronts, oven clean etc on different weeks plus an hour of ironing. She did a maintenence clean rather than deep clean because that's what I needed....so she didn't scrub the grout, clean the skirting boards or window etc. I did those jobs periodically. I have known some cleaners to be obsessed with providing a deep clean standard every week and therefore needing more hours.

So I guess I’m not unreasonable thinking our cleaner is not very efficient.

In 4 hours she did the kitchen, bathrooms, floors and dusting downstairs, but only vacuumed and dusted one bedroom and then said she was out of time.

I don’t expect her to make the beds or do any laundry or ironing, but I did expect the whole house to be cleaned/dusted and floors vacuumed and mopped in 4 hours.

I have a 4 bed house with a very fluffy dog that moults. Our cleaners does the whole house too to bottom excluding the utility room and ensuite. No changing beds etc but a good dust hoover and mop plus wiping down the cupboard doors and doors and deep clean of both bathrooms. She will pull furniture out and hoover behind those too. Definitely your cleaner is taking too long.

Hard to exactly say as houses are very different. A newly fitted minimal bathroom with everything put away will take far less time than an older one with twenty bottles of shampoo left out!

Roughly speaking though a house that size can be thoroughly cleaned to a high standard in 3 hours, with sheets changed.

Sometimes houses need more of a deep clean first before to get them back on track.

3 bed with 3 pets. Ours can do all floors up and downstairs, inside of windows, basic dusting and surface clean in kitchen and we ask her to alternaye the bathrooms and skip the box room as my husband works in it. 2hrs. Only basic surfaces are dusted so if I wanted every item done properly and both bathrooms, she would probably need 3. She makes our bed and arranges the towels nicely.

That’s exactly what I’d like the cleaner to do, I don’t need any extras. She’s been 3 times and never managed to clean the whole house. I gave her the benefit of the doubt at first because I thought she was still finding her feet, but she’s the one who said she can clean the house in 4 hours.

She also charges the top going rate for the area, so I was expecting a top job. Her cleaning is ok, but not great to warrant the extra time she’s taking.

Your cleaner sounds great. I thought 3 hours would have been reasonable for our house, but I was definitely expecting everything to be done in 4.

Really it depends on the state of the house. As in how dirty it is.

I have a four bedroomed house, with two of the bedrooms largely unused. My cleaner does a great job in two hours a fortnight.

It’s not very dirty. We are not messy and tend to pick up after ourselves. I also tidy up before the cleaner comes.

I could clean the whole house to a reasonable standard in 3-4 hours. We only hired someone to do it because we’re struggling with time at the moment.

Cleaner here. 2 hours. It takes a few sessions to work out how to approach a house efficiently, where the best socket is for the hoover, which corner always has a spider in etc. but 4 hours is mad. Find another cleaner.

I don't have a cleaner and I do my 3 bed semi top to bottom every week. I've just finished today's clean, started at around 8.30am and just finished at 11.15am.

I live alone and have no carpets but I've vacuumed and dusted all rooms, changed bed sheets, cleaned windows upstairs (I alternate weeks for upstairs and downstairs). Deep cleaned bathroom, kitchen surfaces, washed all hard floors, done 2 loads of washing and hung them out, done the washing up and put it away.

I'd say a professional cleaner should easily be able to tackle a 3 bed house in 3 hours.

Was this the first clean? As a former cleaner I would say the first clean always takes longer, you have to get used to the house and work out what the best routine is, get it up to your standard and then it's much easier to maintain in a shorter amount of time. That does sound like a long time but it really does depend

It was the third clean.

It would take me at least 3 hours. Hoovering, mopping, dusting, polishing, inside of windows, thorough go of the bathroom, clean the stove and the fridge, empty all the bins, change the bedding etc.

I have a 3 bed, 1 bath and a dog. My cleaner does top to toe in 2hrs once a fortnight. Sometimes I'll ask her to change the bed or do an odd different thing (this week she went to the chemist for me!) but everything is always done. She even folds the toilet paper ends into points 😁

No, I don't think you're being unreasonable.

My cleaner takes 4 hours to do our 4 bed but she does finish the job in that time and also we aren't very tidy. We do tidy up for her but not to the same extent as you, by the sounds of it

It depends on how much clutter you have around and how dirty is or gets.

if the house looks like a hotel in terms of less shit around and being cleaned regularly, 1.5-2 hrs

With lots of ornaments and clutter or being left to gather dust for weeks 4 hrs to 3 days.

My current house is 150 sqm and cleaner comes 4 hours a week. She does change one bed and do a small amount of ironing, which probably takes up max 1 hour. I’m usually here wfh when she’s here and she does take the whole time and isn’t slacking. I certainly couldn’t do it all in less than 3-4 hours myself.

Depends on your expectations somewhat I think.
we have a 5 bed house, 2.5 bathrooms across 3 floors and our cleaner comes once a week. Everything gets pretty much a surface clean but nothing deep cleaned.
a few times a year we book a deep clean which includes skirting boards and kitchen cupboard tops, windows and shutters (she does dust them weekly), fridge clean etc.
The house is always tidy when she comes and we don’t have an excess of ‘stuff’. We are happy enough that it’s done to a reasonable standard and accept that things like a deep clean of bathrooms (getting into all the floor grout, proper scrub of the shower tiles rather than just a spray and wipe over) don’t get done weekly as she just doesn’t have time. We’d pay her for longer but she does 8-12 with us and then goes to another job for 1 and she just doesn’t have the time.