Hired 10+ cleaners… all have been crap in some way.

[CleanerWoes]

I should start by saying I am good client - pay on time, cash, 3 hours every week, very rarely cancel. I don’t have unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved in the time limit, nor am I fussy about the cleaning really - just need it to be clean enough until the next week. I’m not tight with my budget, I have paid up to £30 per hour in the past. I am self-employed myself, so I totally get some of the difficulties with being self-employed, too.

I’ve now hired (and had to get rid of) over 10 cleaners. Some have been horrendously unreliable - cancelling just before they are meant to be here, or not telling me at all, just not turning up. Some have spent ages chatting to me, or any other family member they can, up to 30 minutes chatting not cleaning (I have teenagers who feel too awkward to say anything or to walk away). Cleaners who trauma dump and tell me really intimate and inappropriate details about their private lives. I have had cleaners who were rubbish at cleaning. I’ve had cleaners who tidied but didn’t clean. I had one cleaner who smoked out the window and would do fag farts around the house 🤢

My current cleaner is good at cleaning, however insists they do not tidy. That sounds fine, right? I’m not an untidy person at all, but like most people, there may be a pair of shoes on the floor…they won’t even pick a cushion up off the floor, they will hoover and mop around it! When I messaged to ask why they hadn’t cleaned under the pillow (I did so in a light-hearted, almost joke way), they replied saying they don’t tidy so anything out of place won’t be moved. Similarly, they don’t move anything from surfaces as ‘they might break it’, they don’t move photo frames, lamps, nothing…

How do I find someone decent, any tips? I need a cleaner as DH and I work 12 hour days…

Hmm I wonder if this could actually be a case of OCD rather than a quirk -
But where do you hide your baskets?

I used to have cleaners. I found they all started off good but with time, and I guess what happens in general, complacency becomes an issue and I felt I could do better myself. They used to leave early too. So I do it myself now, rather then taking a chance on getting another.

After ten cleaners I'd assume your the problem and not them 😂 😂 😂

@CleanerWoes
I'm a solo cleaner
Don't go to an agency as they don't care
Don't pay cash
Get someone who will come round and quote you for the whole job, not per hour. They may take longer sometimes or less.
You don't sound like a bad employer, but you are employing bad cleaners. Get a Solo cleaner who has their own solo business and who takes a BACS payment or has a card reader. Look at the FB page of Solo Cleaners Support with Helen Young, you may find a solo cleaner there. You will get an idea of what we are about too x

Good Luck

I wouldn’t do an agency again due to variability and at the moment I’ve just gone for doing it ourselves. I found that when we had a cleaner our house was lovely for a day and then the kids trashed it quickly anyway so keeping on top of it ourselves has been better.

agency
cleaner 1: amazing. Previously employed commercially. Lasted around 6 weeks before she got a full tile cleaning job (I was pleased for her).
cleaner 2: very rarely did full 3 hours but was quick and thorough. She also used to tidy. She got a full time office job about 3 months in.
cleaner 3: terrible. Did 1h30 out of 3, really slapdash. I asked her to leave and left the agency.

I then had a lovely lady who was good for a long time and then started to take the piss a bit. When she came on her own I’d get 3 hours of a good clean. She started bringing randoms to split it and they’d chat and be annoying while I was wfh but also less thorough. She also liked rearranging stuff so sometimes I’d have to spend my evening putting things back where I wanted them.

I’m giving up to be a cleaner. I’m on minimum wage as a finance professional and I love cleaning, I’m good at it and can earn double. What is the world coming to.

I've also given up on cleaners. None of the ones I've had have done a bad job.

But I want to be able to give a list of things I want done, not just have them dictate a regular routine to me. I don't get why wiping out cupboards is not acceptable in the time I'm paying for rather than washing floors?

I also want them to work for the time I pay for (happy for a coffee stop in the middle) and not leave early.

I also don't want a nutter who invades my personal space and rocks up and let's herself in on non cleaning days (regret THAT particular person A LOT!!!).

You earned £10 an hour working in finance?

Look at Helen Young's Facebook page called Solo Cleaners Support X
Good luck xx

I'm a Housekeeper and can tell a few stories about difficult clients. The most common ask is that you do the whole house in 2 hours and get told that the last cleaner could do it in that time. There's no way you can do a 4 bed, 2 bath house to a decent standard in 2 hours. Someone else once sent me a snotagram for doing their washing whilst they were on holiday. The laundry basket was piled high and I thought it'd be a nice thing to do, so they would have a fresh start when they got back. I was sent a message with capital letters saying never to do that again. (They also didn't know that I'd actually done 2 additional hours unpaid for them because their house was a hovel and the 2 hours they paid me for would barely scratch the surface). I never went back. A current client drives me mad but she's lovely, so I stay but I'll make a start upstairs, tidy up, bring dirty coffee cups/full bins/laundry baskets down and she'll say, are you all done upstairs. I've only been up there 15 minutes for gods sake.

My Granny used to say, 'when all around you is wrong, look to yourself'

I’ve had various cleaners, similar stories to upthread.
the worst one was actually a lovely young woman through an agency.
even if I was home she would behave the same.
she spent the 3 hours mainly stroking the dog, who absolutely adored her. occasionally she’d have a token duster or cloth in the other hand and would vaguely pat surfaces as she went round.
the dog loved her so much and I’d cancelled the last cleaner via the agency as she was no good.
Eventually the agency called me to tentatively enquire how I found her (I gather all the other clients had cancelled).
they told me they were letting her go. The dog was devastated lol - I wish I’d kept her on as dog carer.

anyway, no cleaner now I give up. Dh hoovers (only weekly but not bad standard) and deep cleans the shower which is the worst job. I do floors when I can be bothered but it’s an excellent standard when I do!

Ahhhhh @Nomorecoconutboosts I did cleaning many, many years ago. One house had an AMAZING dog. I carried on cleaning for them years after I wanted to leave because I didn't want to stop seeing the dog. Eventually it got ill and died. I left then.

My cleaner is polish. I pay her a bit more. She does a good job and is reliable. I like and trust her

it’s not perfect - in three hours she doesn’t do under the sofa or the skirting etc and I still have to deep clean the bathroom myself every month.

i think this is as good as it gets!

I actually do agree with this sentiment, but in this case I know I am a good client, I don’t have unrealistic expectations (in fact I even ask the cleaners how long they think it will take / let them know I’m happy to pay them whatever). I’m reliable, I don’t cancel, the house is never in a state and I tidy and clean toilets before they arrive. I’m friendly too (hence them wanting to gas on or trauma dump for 30 minutes to me instead of cleaning!!)

Ours are great but it took about five cleaners who never actually turned up to get my current pair. I arranged numerous times for a cleaner to come round to see the house and quote etc. and they would always sent a text the day off saying they had had a family emergency, ill kid, whatever and never turned up and never heard from them again.

My current cleaner had the same experience when she tried to bring another person on the team for maternity cover with a view to permanently expanding their business: people didn’t turn up, didn’t respond to messages, agreed to come on board and then the day of the clean they were ill or someone was ill or whatever. In the end she decided not to bother and just had to reduce clients for a year.

I guess cleaning is one of those things that a lot of people think they can do, but doing it professionally is very different. And perhaps some don’t view it as a business but think it’s a way to make an easy few quid while kids are in school but then reality sort of hits.

I don’t know what the answer is. I used an agency where on the second visit they dropped some aftershave bottles and chipped our new sink. I didn’t report it because the woman who did it was so upset. However they sent a succession of different teams who all had issues. One lot left having completely forgotten a bathroom and upstairs bedroom. And they weren’t cheap.
then I had a few who all started off well and got worse and worse so I could barely tell they had been. One started confiding in my teenage son about her family problems when he was the only one in and he felt very awkward.
Now I clean myself on my days off and only have myself to blame when it’s not up to standard !

It is indeed a skill.
I do my friends cleaning, once a week and I charge just £20 for 2 hours. They think I do a marvellous job and their friends want to hire me but I'm not an actual cleaner, I'm just helping out a friend who is really good to me, so I wouldn't feel confident enough to do it as a proper job , I do it like I do my own which isn't really that thorough 😳.

@Pplareasthickasshit NMW is £12.71 ph not £10. And yes, many employers get away with paying NMW for 'finance' roles as there is a scarcity of jobs that aren't p/t contracts or care work.

Honestly for the most part decent cleaners don’t exist for the sole reason that the majority of cleaners do so because they can’t get work doing anything else, and so they settle.

I’ve had a couple, One who was caught on the landing with the vacuum running while she stood talking on her mobile phone.

One who turned out to be a scammer, came a couple of times, then texted saying she was unwell and started to ask for money with emotional cards in the mix “I just want to buy something nice for my daughter’s Christmas,” so I reported her, took a break from cleaners and then tried again a few months later with a different agency and oh the irony they assigned me the very same woman who had gone from the agency I was with to that one, so I reported her before she even set foot in my house. They then sent a string of cleaners who called off at the last minute or tried to rearrange times etc. One who did bugger all for the money, the only one who was decent was the supervisor who came a couple of times to cover for ones who had called it at the last minute but she wasn’t a permanent one, so eventually I had to give up and wouldn’t bother again.

Honestly it’s not worth it.

I disagree. There are just far too many people who will tell you the same stories about how unreliable, dishonest, etc cleaners are. I know plenty of people who have had similar issues with cleaners in fact this thread is testament to that fact. I have a friend who had a cleaner for six years who ended up stealing from him, ILs had one who decided she should be paid more depending on what needed cleaning, despite the fact there was no mention of this in her adverts, the one who tried to scam money from me and apparently from others I was told by the agency when I reported her, and then by the second agency she’d told a whole other story about her life. Generally cleaners are just people who don’t want to work but want to earn money and so they decide to “clean” for a living.

I'm well aware of the minimum wage. Cleaners typically charge £20 an hour and the poster said she could earn double as a cleaner than in her finance job, hence why I asked if she earned £10 an hour.

I have found in world of cleaners, oven cleaners and carpet cleaners, a lot of them seem to have chaotic, highly dramatic lives, involving about 5 tense phone calls per day to various babes and huns. They then need to recover from the calls and download it onto you as you are trying to work.

If you've had 10+ cleaners that are all crap, you might want to start investigating the common factor.

I think you can find a good one you just need to look well and might take a couple can't believe how many people have had bad ones reading these stories. The people I clean for I have done for years never had a complaint I've never noticed turned up. But I have heard horror stories of their previous cleaners. I love to clean so it is a great job for me I have a high standard and can do a 5 bedroom house in 2 hours including bathrooms I see it as a really good work out. I'd imagine people who just do it because they need a job aren't that good. It isn't my main job I do it for the extra money and because I enjoy it.