What can I expect a cleaner to manage in 2 hours?

[Swaliswan]

I've never had a cleaner before but I've recently had DC3 and can't seem to get on top of my housework. I've an offer of 2 hours a week at £8 per hour but I've no idea if this is a reasonable rate or what I can reasonably expect her to do in such a short time. I don't really want to have a regular cleaner but I think that I might manage to keep the house up together if I was starting from clean IYSWIM?

We pay our cleaner £8 an hour (but she does six hours a week0. Depends how big your house is how much you need.

Decide what you want her to focus on, I would say, kitchens, bathrooms and vacuum everywhere.

Remember she is there to clean not tidy so put your stuff away before she comes. :)

I used to clean a palace (yes, really) and do 2 x 3 hours a week no probs.

I would vacuum, dust, do bathrooms & mop floors every time and polish floors, deep clean chandeliers, wax furniture, do skirting boards and other bigger jobs on a kind of rotation.

So in 1/1.5 hours your cleaner could do the basics and in the next hour/half hour do those jobs that are needed but not daily. eg clean walls & light switches etc.

You should leave a note or tell them what you want doing "extra" to avoid confusion.

Did you go through an agency for peace of mind or just advertise locally?

in 2 hours ours does kitchen, 3 bathrooms, hallways and tidies dc bedrooms (my choice,I do the hoovering afterwards).
Also cleans blinds sometimes.
I love her!
A regular cleaner means that I do more clearing/ sorting out, as it's a better place to start from.

In 2 hours mine does:
Kitchen (surfaces, range cooker - not inside oven - sink, mop floor)
Mop wooden floor in playroom / hall / loo
Hoover livingroom, diningroom, stair and landing, 2 of the bedrooms
Dust 2 bedrooms, diningroom, playroom, livingroom
Clean 2 bathrooms and downstairs loo

She doesn't touch the spare bedrooms (no time) and never has time for anything extra. I sometimes feel that what does get done is not done as well as it could be (e.g. bathroom shelves cleaned, but nothing moved to clean underneath) but I honestly don't think she could do more in the time.

I find it great to know that at least the basics are clean, and it forces me to get the house reasonably tidy. We pay £10/hour, so £8 sounds good.

She's a mum from our church who advertised in the church notices so I'm not worried about her being a stranger. I don't know her because her children are older than our DC so hopefully that means that we can still be business like.

What I would really like her to do is clean our laminate floors (which I hate but we still have some since moving in a year ago) in the way that I do. I sweep through first and then get down on my hands and knees to hand mop them and dry them as I go because they would get ruined if left wet. I like them to be really clean because our girls are terrible for picking food up off of the floor if they drop it and eat it. We have laminate in the dining room, kitchen and tiny bathroom. Any cleaning of bathroom/kitchen/hoovering/cleaning windows/dusting on top of this would be a bonus!

Wow, your cleaner does masses in 2 hours, Grumpy Fish!

May I suggest you invest in a Vileda flat mop if you want to clean laminate floors easily. Down on knees is undignified and unnecessary these days

WMMC. I have one of those mops for an everyday flick round but I don't find that they get the floor clean enough even if I use it with a laminate floor spray. I use the mop to sweep up before I scrub the floors to get them properly clean.