Cost of cleaner…

[PeonyPatch]

I live in the SE of England in a home county. I had a cleaner who used to come once per month and would clean kitchen/living room, hallway downstairs & upstairs plus downstairs loo and upstairs bathroom. She would charge £120 a month (only come once a month) she claimed to do a deep clean (as in would move all appliances out of the way in kitchen and clean underneath). Besides this, I’m unclear as to what differentiated this from your standard clean. I also found that skirting boards still had dust on so I would clean these myself.

I’ve made the decision to cancel her service, and I’m now wondering what the going rate is. She would be here for 3 hours.

London area, £17-18 per hour, for 5-6 hours a week, paid direct to cleaner. It’s gone up a lot over the past few years, but that seems right considering cost of living etc.

OP, you should be able to afford a couple of hours every week, which might work better than twice a month. My cleaner doesn’t like bi weekly jobs as it makes it harder to “fill” her hours - she would rather have a smaller job the same hours every week so she can book other regular work around them. You might find the same goes for you?

My cleaner is £20 an hour, and does 4 hours fortnightly. Even though I can afford for her to come each week, I think £160 per month is quite enough for me to spend on cleaning the house. I have a 1930’s semi-detached home with 3 bedrooms, and seeing as we’re out for the majority of each day, we’re able to keep the house looking reasonable in between.

No - it’s not agency. She has her own business. She leafleted our area a few months ago and that is how I hired her.

Also I don’t think I’m being snobbish at all. I’ve been to uni 3 times and I work in the healthcare industry. I have a student loan. It’s not the same as being a cleaner and required hard graft in a different way. Cleaning doesn’t require such extra education - anyone can do it, and like pp have said, you can leave school at 16 to do it. I also believe in paying people fairly, but £40 an hour and not even emptying bins?

Thise of you paying under £18/hour should be ashamed of yourselves - your cleaners are earning less than minimum wage

Minimum wage is £12 p/h to be fair. However, I agree that that’s too low to be paying a cleaner. I think £18-£25 is fair

To come out with miniimum wage as a self employed cleaner the charge needs to be approx 1.5 times minimum wage.

If employed as a coeaner yhd employer covers insurance, equipment, petrol and vehicle costs, sick pay, holiday paypension, employer No contributions.

Self employed - that all had the Hd covered.

Anything less to an £18/hour and cleaners are earning less than minimum wage, which is shameful.

Like I said…. I think 18-25 is fair

my cleaner charged £18 an hour with supplying products, £15 an hour without. In the south east. She was my friend, but I paid her the usual rate as didn’t want mates rates as she was setting up a new business and I wanted her to earn enough to live off. Sadly she died 6 months ago. I don’t want another cleaner as would just feel odd so I’m back to doing it myself.

I pay £14/hr.

I’m not “ashamed of myself” as I don’t set her fee, she does. Same with any service.

We pay £25 an hour for our cleaner. She does a few other jobs for us as well as cleaning though, so she is usually here for 6-8 hours per week.

Wow! You think all cleaners are less educated than their clients?

I don’t think that’s what the poster was saying.

Wtf are you on about? Our cleaner advertised her services and told us this is my hourly rate. We didn't barter her down!

Also the UK minimum wage atm is £12.21 per hour. So unless you're paying less than that or demanding they supply their own products, then no, you're doing absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

In Ireland and my cleaner is €20 an hour. She’s honestly not that great but she still does a better job on the bathrooms than I’ll ever do. I don’t have a set routine with her, I just get her whenever it all starts getting on top of me. I had a different one who was €15 an hour but used all my stuff and was really unreliable.

There is almost certainly an air of, I put myself through an education to better myself and now have debts to pay off, whereas cleaners left school straight after GCSEs to start earning straight away and therefore haven't acquired any such debts.

Tell me you know nothing about self-employment without telling me you know nothing about self-employment. You pay your cleaner less than £18 and it’s fucking shameful because they are earning less than minimum wage and you probably know that. They have to cover their running costs their business insurancetheir sickness, their holiday and the pension or with that as well that comes out to Wallander £12 an hour or you’re incredibly naive. In any case, it’s shameful.

If she's self-employed, then , sorry, but you are definitely over paying . Iagree with otheres that $17 -$18 (sorry, my laptop only does dollarsigns!) is definitely over the top, particularly if she's not offering a premium service.
You coul try asking her if her rate comes down if she does a weekly/fortnightly service.
Do you mean me re snobbish"? I don't think you're snobbish.

To answer your question though OP - she is overcharging. By a fair bit. £18-20 per hour is fair.

If you got her to do a specific task likd cleaning your oven, I’d expect to pay what you would pay for an oven cleaning service.

So every consumer out there is supposed to assume they're being grossly undercharged by anyone self employed, and therefore insist they are allowed to pay more than the advertised price?

I assume you are adamant on paying double the price tag for a pint of milk at your local independent corner shop?

so take the quote you've already got at £18ph....

I agree with this. I'm not sure why you think it is £36 per hour and dismissed it. It is exactly what you are looking for, at a reasonable £18 per hour of work.

thank you for your response! I agree with you. I can’t remember who referred to me as snobbish, but it offended me as I work hard and I have a health condition as well which means I’m often fatigued and too tired to do a lot of cleaning, that’s why I was after help but with cost of living I can’t justify £40 per hour

Thank you, this was my original question :)

You need somebody to do 3 hours every other week at £20 per hour.

@XenoBitchu ok hun? You seem to have got yourself awfully worked up.