Cleaner expectations

[redmist12]

What can I reasonably expect from a cleaner and what is asking too much?

Depends entirely on the house and how many hours the cleaner is coming for.

A good thing to do is clean it yourself at a normal pace (not flat out) and see what you can get done in that time and ask the cleaner to do that.

Job wise I think you can ask almost anything (within reason obviously). They're always free to turn you down if they don't do that specific task. Our current cleaner doesn't iron for example. I asked, she said no. Fair enough.

Nothing involving bodily fluids. If you/someone else has pissed on the floor/puked on the carpet/shat the bed....clean it yourself. But that should be obvious!

As long as you outline the general scope of the work at the start of the arrangement when she/he is pricing up the job all should be fair.

As Nuff rightly says anything that is within their service is fine to ask for but to be fair to the service provider ask for these at the time they are quoting a price as it's not fair to alter the scope of the work after the price has been agreed.

Obviously all that is asked for should fall within health and safety regs but a professional cleaner/service provider should be able to to do risk assessment and manage expectation there at the beginning to make sure those doing the work are safe and all activities are covered with the insurances they have in place. To this end we always say no lifting anything too heavy to safely move and no climbing within our service to protect our staff from potential injury that we are not covered for.

I think other than that it's up to the service provider to let you know if anything is not included within their particular service. For example we do not provide oven cleaning and are domestic only but other cleaning services do provide this. It just depends on what that person/company offers. Some will specialise in one area, others will offer several services.

You have to find a service that matches your own requirements and vice versa.

Thanks - how clean would you expect it to be before you came? Toilets cleaned? Odd crisp picked off floor?

We ask in our terms that in order to prepare the house for the cleaning service the house be picked up and tidy with excess clutter and valuables stored away in the areas that need to be cleaned, but we don't expect any actual cleaning to be done before we come as that part is our job to do for the client.

Just a general tidy up so that we can get to the floors and surfaces for the cleaning is enough.