£22 per hour for cleaning - REALLY?!

[DorotheaShottery]

I was thinking the other day "Dot - you've had enough of this cleaning lark - get yourself a cleaner!"

I put some feelers out on FB and it appears the going rate is £20-£22 per hour!!

Is that normal in the not-SE-not-Cheshire parts of the UK? AIBU to think it's ridiculous?

So what about a gardener, I mean the ones that weed and cut grass and hedges, they are generally men, they also get paid more than cleaning

Oh I see, sorry, I didn’t realise it was two separate cleaning services, so the first one was too fully booked to offer the weekly cleans as well so you were getting other quotes in but they didn’t believe you’d already had it deep cleaned?

I think that might be because clients sometimes misrepresent the condition of the home, so many experienced cleaning services err on the side of caution with a first clean and will allow for some extra time for the first visit

I pay £34 an hour for a cleaner in Melbourne, thats what it costs to pay someone that is supporting his family.

@DorotheaShottery you don't say whether you are paying the cleaner directly or through an agency.

I have my cleaners from an agency, which means I nearly always get a clean (don't have to worry about holidays or sickness, or retiring).

I am in Yorkshire. I pay £58 for a 3 hour clean and I also leave a £6 tip - so that's £64 - very close to your £22 an hour.

For comparison, I pay my gardener £25 an hour. I don't see any reason why gardeners should earn more than cleaners, do you?

What I don't understand is why aren't the people needing foodbanks advertising to be cleaners on Facebook? How is it necessary to pay £20 for a cleaner when there are apparently so many people around eating one meal a day? Surely two hours working at a tenner an hour would make a huge difference to them?

My cleaner comes weekly for two hours, at £18 ph, in cash usually. I change the beds and do all the laundry; we clean the insides of the windows too, so her role is to dust, mop and hoover the floors. I provide all the materials, tools, products and machinery, and the cloths go straight into my washing machine. I also do a reasonable amount of cleaning (and all the tidying) between visits, because we are unwilling to live in disordered surroundings.

She's not as thorough as her predecessor, who left to clean holiday cottages and AirBnBs because she wanted more hours. Both have become friends. The one before that worked longer hours and did ironing too (she used to work in a shirt factory and could press 35 shirts an hour!) but now I do any ironing required, although I am much slower!

Yeah, the amount they charge is a total joke as, like you say, they aren't actual gardeners who know when to plant/prune etc, just people who do the mundane tasks in the garden. We all say our teens can't get jobs so I don't know why there isn't an uber type app for them bob a jobbing in the garden.

Same! Lot of cynicism on this thread.

I'm £17 an hour. Scotland.

But would you be happy to pay someone that little? It's not even NMW.

Wow! Poor people should clean for £10 per hour? Did you really just say that! 🤯

So if you really are applying this logic, why don’t those same poor people you mention clean for £25 per hour and get back up on their feet?

Why the hell would anyone ever set up any service for less than half the market rate and well below the min wage? Why would they and why should they???

Domestic cleaners don't work all day cleaning - they need to travel between jobs, so there will be a margin in there for transport time (as well as other overheads) if they have any sense.

What do you think someone who cleans is worth? You want someone to clean your home so you don’t have to but want to pay minimum wage? Is that their worth?

My cleaner charges £22 and I pay her by bank transfer at her request. She's a gem.

Offer what you want to pay and see if anyone takes it. Its a free world

To clean other people literal shit, I'd say that's really cheap

If they are self employed thet can charge what they want just like cleaners ,
Gardeners do tend to be more seasonal though
My Dad has a gardener March to October
Whereas he has a cleaner all year round

Have you put it out on Facebook that people should be grateful to be able to clean your toilet for minimum wage? I would be interested in the responses

I pay £25 an hour and she supplies her own products. She’s great and it’s worth it

I couldn’t get any to declare an hourly rate.. told it depends what you want doing… err surely if I saw 2 hours to do x y and z cleaning tasks that should be ok? I don’t need someone to Hoover. I want them to just do bathrooms, inside windows and mopping floors. The can dictate how long they need within reason but it seems the rate changes on the tasks wanted. One quoted something that worked out at £45 an hour. I’d be better off reducing my hours myself!

I would want someone with references and insurance so I don’t think £20-25 an hour is too bad but that’s the max I’d pay. Cash in hand would be nmw and id be providing the materials

A cleaner gains entrance to your house when you are not there. In my book this is infinitely more important than a plumber who will attend once or twice, even if it to fix a major problem. The professionalism of a cleaner is maybe 4
10% their skill and 90% their integrity.

Again, this is a guess only - I would never voluntarily let a stranger touch anything in my place and be responsible for hygiene, but then again, I have major trust issues.

Vast difference in common sense and life-saving skills between those ages though, it is dangerous to go by price, I think.

Yabu, they have to pay tax, NI, pensions , sick pay etc out of that

My contracting rate is 10x that per hour and that's work I do on top of my day job. And I just sit on my bum and type!

Google reckons overheads for a self-employed cleaner are 10 - 25%. Yikes, sounds like a lot! Let's go with 10%. And let's say someone is doing 7 hours of actual cleaning per day, 5 days a week.
7 x £22 = £154 per day, x 5 = £770 per week.
minus 10% leaves £693 per week.

£693 x 48 = £33,264 per year. Yes, there are 52 weeks in a year, but employed people get 4 weeks off, why shouldn't a cleaner? They also have no sick leave, and aren't getting the employer's contribution to their pension.