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…