Desperately need a cleaner but am I expecting too much?

[Gertrudethechicken]

I am struggling to recruit a cleaner/ housekeeper for my house. I’ve had afew replies to my adverts online but they end up ghosting me once I explain what’s involved, which got me thinking I might be scaring people off.

i am looking for someone to come in for three houses twice a week to hoover and mop the home (twice weekly), clean bathrooms (once weekly), change beds, iron, put clothes and toys away. My home is 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms plus a w/c, utility, living room, play room, dining room, kitchen, ect. I know it’s a large house so happy to negotiate. I can put my headphones on and blitz through my home in afew hours but I recognise this may not be the case for someone coming into a brand new house.

I’d say nowhere near enough
especially with laundry and putting away duties
one of the consultants I work with at the hospital has a mothers help and she does all this and laundry and childcare and meal prep but she is there from 7:30-11:30
and then 3-6 every day so 7 hrs a day Monday to Friday

I think a cleaner would just want to “clean” but it would need to be clear and tidy for them to do this - not be doing laundry and putting toys and clothing away

I have a cleaner in a smaller house than yours. She only changes one bed. Its takes her about 3.5 hours.

Also, contrary to what others say, my cleaner is happy to do tidying but obviously we pay her for doing it e.g. we allocate around 45 minutes of her visit to tidying. I'm sure many cleaners would also iron if you paid them for it.

I think I you need a housekeeper
my cleaner doesn’t tidy away toys or iron and put away clothes, she cleans bathrooms, hoovers and mops floors, dusts etc it takes her 5 hours though. Similar no of rooms to your house. We tidy away toys before she comes
a friend of mine has a housekeeper and she does all the sorting of laundry, ironing, organising toys etc etc

It takes me 3 hours to dust, hoover, clean my 3 bed, 2 bathroom and 1 WC house. This does not include any ironing, changing sheets etc. does not include any 'irregular' jobs either (washing skirting, windows, inside cupboards, fridge etc). You are definitely not allowing enough time.

My cleaner was in yesterday. I’d already made the beds, did all the washing up/eveything put away and the house was 100% tidy. I have a 3 bed 1 bath with a conservatory. I booked her for 3 and a half hours and she was here for an extra ten minutes and I noticed she didn’t quite finish everything (normally has a go at a couple windows each time on rotation but didn’t this time, plus my daughters room wasn’t amazing and some marks left around bath). Also as I was in all day I got stuck in with her and I did all the bins in the house and cleaned microwave as well as a few other bits. Not complaining as she was working flat out the whole time and I could see she’d just run out of time. 3 hours twice a week for your size house, plus all the extra clutter/laundry/ironing sounds ridiculous to me. Maybe 2 cleaners for 3 hours twice a week??

Yeah that’s not enough time

Also I’m not sure if you’re aware of ironing costs. I’m in Liverpool and I’ve googled this as average pricing, ironing services are extra and they’re not bloody cheap. A single outfit of a pair of trousers, a t shirt and a jumper will set you back £6-9 to be ironed

That’s a ridiculous amount of short hours for a house that size. You are asking for too much, and that would tell anyone that you wouldn’t be someone reasonable to work for. My cleaner comes in 5 hours twice a week, and we have 1 less bathroom and room.

she has plenty of time to clean properly and tidy if she needs. She often just ends up deep cleaning because it’s enough time. You need to increase the hours. My cleaner comes irons, changes bedding and will do anything because she is grateful for the hours to do it. She even did some windows this week, on her own.
it doesn’t matter if you are paying more per hour, it’s unrealistic.

Ironing and tidying is where you're losing them.

When I was a cleaner I simply never ironed, washed dishes, or tidied things away. Because I learned that there was always mission creep. The piles of dishes and clothes grew. Every time.

You need a housekeeper and not a regular domestic cleaner
you also need a minimum of 5-6 hours per visit for a house of your size
you’d need to accept you’d be paying a decent hourly rate

I don’t think you’re allowing enough time to iron and tidy up. I think in 3 hours they would just about to be able to clean the house.

You don’t need a housekeeper OP. But you do need more hours.

I have 6 bed x 4 bath, I have a cleaner 4 hours 2x a week. Ironing around 2 hours per week.

They don’t do tidying, that’s your job.

Traditionally all items of clothing and toys should be put away before the cleaner comes. It would be even more useful if you removed all decorative items and place them on the bed to make dusting more straightforward.

lol that's a step too far

I think 4 cleaners would struggle when you add the ironing

So this is what you should be expecting for a standard clean for your sized house op. That does not include cleaning materials with my company which is an extra £2 an hour on top. That includes no extras, no tidying and cleaning up after children, no changing beds, no laundry or ironing. Realistically if 2x a week then I’d recommend 6 hours per day, so 12 hours cleaning/tidying/laundry

I don't think cleaners normally do ironing and changing sheets. Or tidying toys etc
I think you are asking for too much in 3 hours. What were you going to pay?

Unanimous, it seems.

How do you expect the person to know or work out where the things being tidied and put away. How much time have you allowed for them in the early time to do that, it sounds a bit as if you are expecting them to be up to scratch from the start.

I’ve had really good experiences with cleaners and ironing services. I tend to start by telling them what is required and then asking them to tell me how long it will take. We also build in done wiggle room , separating out basic tasks that need to be done on every visit and others which can be done less often on a rota (which they organise.

It’s much easier to plan if you don’t want much tidying but of course that will depend on who else is living there.

Good luck with finding someone.

Upon review, yes I retract that, it’s still far too little isn’t it? Can you tell I don’t iron and vastly underestimated how time consuming it is 😂 out of curiosity I’d love to know how many people are actually living in the house? If it’s 5 bed and all 5 bedrooms need cleaning each time so presumable there’s at least 1 person in each, that’s a SHIT TON of picking up after to do. And I can’t even begin to imagine the ironing. Assuming the op has a partner and 4 children, I’d imagine the laundry and ironing for 6 people would take up 3 of those hours alone 🫠

It all depends on your budget.

The other thing is that few reputable cleaners have space for a 2x per week regular client. At the moment, I can only offer people an "occasional" slot. That means that every weekend or 2, I might send out a message to about 10 occasionals to say i have a free slot sometime that coming week. It's then First Come, First Served, for those occasionals. All my weekly, 2 weekly and monthly slots are filled.

I do all this if the client has the budget and we both have the time.

IMO it's much better to start off with a cleaner just cleaning which forces you to tidy up before she comes. Sometimes the forced routine reduces the amount of work that is really required.

Ironing is a separate matter to cleaning and while sometimes the same person will both clean and iron, the jobs need to be separated out and timed differently.

We have a similar size house, a bit smaller (5 bedrooms; 3 bathrooms & loo; no playroom or dining room)

Our cleaner does 5.5 hours once a week and does what you list except no putting toys away, I make sure the house is tidy. She does some ironing, usually 3-5 work shirts. She folds the clean laundry and puts away the kids (I never asked her to she just did it!). 2x single bed 1x double changed and used linen washed.

Of course as she only comes once a week she only mops and hoovers once.

She is a godsend. But I have also had other cleaners who did a similar amount (minus the laundry folding) in the same time.

I agree with pp that it’s the tidying that makes this unrealistic and perhaps also the 2x visits so 2x mop and hoovers. Remember the cleaner will incur unpaid travel time and costs for 2 visits as well.

Maybe try for a longer visit once a week and accept you may need to do a bit of a mop/hoover between visits? And get things tidy before they come.