do you have a routine for your cleaner to follow or do you just let them get on with it?

[virgiltracey]

We have a cleaner for four hours a week on a friday. Its fine but not great and when we had visitors this weekend it took me hours to clean properly even though the cleaner had been the day before.

The house is large (six beds six bathrooms) 3 reception rooms but even so I think we should be able to get a better result. I'm happy to pay for another couple of hours a week.

would you have the cleaner twice a week or have six hours once a week? Does anyone have a list of things they ask their cleaner to do (eg oven every month, windows every month etc) or do you all just let them do their own thing?

I have a cleaner 3 hours a week. 4 beds, 2 bath, 2 recep. I leave her to do her own thing. I would rather have 2x2 hours but she can't do that. If I were you, I would have her twice a week. That way heavy use areas can be done twice a week.

Four hours doesn't seem like enough time for your large home. I would go for 3 hours twice a week.

The cleaner used to come for six hours but she said that she didn't need six hours and could do it in four which is why we cut back in the first place. Just a little bit concerned that what I see as clean is not the same as what she sees as clean. I would rather pay for the extra couple of hours and know that skirting boards are dusted every couple of weeks, microwave is cleaned, windows are done etc. I agree that the house is big and it takes a while to get around it even relatively superficially.

If I'm going to up the hours this is probably my opportunity to set out what I want doing. I've thought of skirting boards, inside of windows, oven, microwave anything else that should be on my list?

I think cleaners vary in their ability to "see dirt" and work undirected. Our previous cleaners really didn't see the dirt that I saw and did things like not moving stuff from the side of the bath while cleaning it. If they didn't use all of the time they had I am pretty certain that they just left early (I was at work) rather than looking around for extra jobs to do on an occassional basis. This is a real contrast to our current cleaner who is really thorough and doesn't need any direction as far as I can tell. With the previous ones I found that I needed to occassionally do a bit of a deep clean of certain things myself and I began to realise that this takes ages and they probably needed more time to do a really thorough job (but they didn't seem inclined to do a better job, so not really worth getting them to do a more thorough job).

Whether your cleaner should be able to do a better job in the time, needs more time or is just not up to it is hard to say. Do you use all of your rooms, i.e. do they all need cleaning each week? If so then you probably do need more than 4 hours. I think that having your cleaner twice a week could be a mistake, as she may just do the same thing both times and you would be no better off in terms of doing the "rotational" items. I think that I would walk through the house and write a list as you get to each room of what needs doing each week, every 2 weeks, monthly, as needed etc. Then provide this to your cleaner. That said, I haven't ever done this and I wouldn't bother now as my new cleaner is so independent.

This is probably not what you want to hear, but I think you need to be ruthless and try out new cleaners. Advertise on gumtree or suchlike, you should get heaps of people applying. Then you give at least three of them a trial where they clean the whole house, get paid for it of course, but are clearly told it's a trial. Then choose the one you like best - there'll be a huge difference I guarantee.

Mind you, I'm too cowardly loyal to do that myself, I stuck with a rubbish cleaner for years. This ruthless method is just how my boss did it and it worked brilliantly for her but she is a hard, hard woman

I clean my own house now

wow if i could afford the luxuary of a cleaner i'd get them to do everything lol. But seriously i'd get them to do the horrible jobs i hate like cleaning the oven, toilet and IRONING. I hate ironing but don't know if you could actually get cleaners to do ironing lol

It depends. My parents have a cleaner who cleans well but doesn't "see the dirt". They have checklist for her, works for them.
I told my cleaner at the beginning what I want done every time and how, she just gets on with it and is brilliant.
Whatevet works for you, really.
But OP do have a word with your cleaner that you are not satisfied. How is she to know otherwise?

stofstg, my cleaner would do the ironing. It is pretty standard with the cleaning services here (london) to offer that.

I let them get on with it. I figure that what the cleaner sees is what most visitors would see and she keeps things ticking over. I do the "deep cleaning" myself.

Its really hard. She's the best one we've had for a while (its a service and they swap them around sometimes) but I resent having to do my own cleaning when I'm paying someone else to do it. So for example when we had visitors ad I did extra cleaning I could see that in the main bathroom she'd cleaned the bath and wiped the sink and mirror and probably mopped the floor and maybe cleaned inside of the shower doors (although we rarely use that shower and so maybe not) but DS2 who is 3 and insisting on doing "stand up wees like daddy" had sprayed the outside of the toilet and it had clearly been on there for a while. There was a load of hair in the bath plughole and the slats on the blind were really dusty. The overflow hole in the sink had black mould on it and limescale was building up on the sink taps.

She clearly hadn't been into any of the spare bedrooms for a while (we only use three on a regular basis) and I suspect she had just glanced in seen that they looked neat and tidy and left them.

I think I will do the room by room bit and then up the hours and ask for specific things to be done and then if it doesn't improve I'll have to look at switching again.