I'm looking for a cleaning service but they are so expensive!

[Dobrynya]

Hello mums and dads.
I'm a mom of 2 little ones and work 3 days a week from home. Needless to say to have and keep a clean house is impacting my health really badly.
I'm looking to get some cleaning help once a week. Mainly for my bathroom, living room floor and kitchen stovetop. But they are all so expensive! Most of them are £15 + !
Can someone please suggest more affordable maids and cleaning services? If they do a good job the first time round I'll book them for every week.
Please, I'm really losing my mind with every free moment going in cleaning and still never achieving a clean house when I step into a room. I've lost 9 kgs in 6 months even though I eat a lot and never exercise. My health is deteriorating badly and I'm never in a good mood. I really need some help to get a clean house.
Thank you.

I mean this kindly but I think you need to work/address your mental health rather than trying to find a 'good' cleaner whilst trying to pay below the 'going' rate.
Cleaners are a luxury and not everyone can afford one. Either find the extra money to pay someone their worth or clean yourself.

I was paying £15/hour pre pandemic. No cleaner now as I've moved (smaller house, different man

I was paying my cleaner £15 per hour, 4 years ago, seems a good price to me, when you think NMW, petrol to get to you, the costs involved with running a business. What were you imagining the rates would be?

My heart alwawy sinks at posts like this. You wouldn't think twice of getting a lunch at costa etc but pay fair wages for someone to do a good job - a job requiring attention to detail and can be practically hard (on knees, backs, hands, skin etc), work that you don't want to do, but you are expecting someone else to do it? For how much? £10? £5? I wonder how much you are on OP per hour? I'm guessing more as there is a privilege at WFH. Is what you do more important?

The fact that you described the service as maid makes me think you aren't British and haven't lived here that long. We do have a minimum wage and also things are expensive like petrol and insurance. Most people have a cleaner for 2-3 hours a week, often only fortnightly. How many hours were you envisaging? If it's significantly more than that you need to hire someone as an employee, with a fair wage plus pay taxes, pension and insurance which comes out at a similar amount as £15/hour!

You need to lower your standards, what you're doing sounds unhealthy

And then hire someone fortnightly

No one would clean in England for less than that as there's so many decent jobs out there with sick pay/holiday pay/pension - don't forget £15 an hour doesn't cover that

Mine is £17.50 per hour up North

What a weird post , cleaning isn't cheap because it's a shit job and people should be recompensed well for clearing up your mess!

The 'cheapest ' way is to find someone to do it themselves rather than via an agency !

Otherwise suck it up like the rest of us and do it yourself !

are You expecting someone more or less following you and the children around, tidying up after you? That’s not a cleaver. A cleaner comes once or twice a week and cleans your house. It’s not a tidying service. I’m not meaning to be a dick but a cleaner won’t solve your toddler mess issues unless you have someone come every day

Just make peace with having a messier house and tidy once a day.

£15 an hour is quite normal. You're completely unreasonable to try and find someone "cheap". People need to earn a living so you either pay the going rate for a cleaner (which is a luxury) or you do it yourself.

How much exactly are you looking to pay? You have to take into consideration that a cleaner has to pay their own public liability insurance, product costs, tax, transport costs on top of how long it takes them to travel to your house. That’s a huge chunk out of their £15 an hour which isn’t that much for a cleaner in the uk. They’re probably taking home less than the legal minimum wage. And then they’ve got the unpleasant task of cleaning up someone else’s dirty house. Would you do that for just a few pounds an hour? You might get away with it if you’re planning on hiring them for a couple dozen hours a few. For the odd hour or two here or there, it’s not worth the time and effort

You sound a bit low OP and that you may be struggling I would speak to your GP. This is a parenting site so yes, lots of us have worked 3 days with 2 little ones many with no cleaner. Does your Dh have unrealistic standards that you need to take about, you sound like you are not in/from the UK.

£18-£20 per hour average where I am

Do you think people should work for less than £15 an hour, which, as they’re mainly self employed, will include putting aside money for sickness/holidays/insurance etc? What hourly rate do you think they should work for?
I have 3 children, 1 disabled and we both work long hours. We don’t have a cleaner as we can’t afford one. I wouldn’t expect cleaners to work for a pittance just so that I could afford one.

Our cleaner charges £35 for 2 hours, that is pretty standard in our area.

When we devalue the work of cleaners, we are devaluing hard labor done overwhelmingly by women.

while it may not be a task that has significant barriers to entry in training or skill, those of us with disabilities or who are not in great shape know all
too well the physical toll the job takes.

you also have to consider travel time to a relatively short job.

I found it worked well to spread out our cleanings to save money. I could do light touch ups in between myself, and the cleaner could do the better cleaning on her weeks.

I actually think cleaning well is a skill. I clean my house but when my daughter does it, it's sooo much better.

You really do need some help OP and like a pp said, perhaps you could save a few £ elsewhere and add that to the cleaning cost per week?

You may also need a bit more help with your mental health while trying to sort this out, especially as a cleaner once a week may not completely erase the cleaning tasks you need to do the rest of the week, therefore affecting you still. So I'll suggest seeing your GP to help with low moods.

I'm not sure someone who was unhappy about a cleaning cost of £15 per hour is going to benefit from a recommendation... 11 months later... for a supposed cleaning company apparently based in Seattle, USA. One with a weirdly-generic website that makes you doubt it's real.

Hi OP, bless you, sorry you are finding it hard.

I live very rurally in the countryside where life is generally cheaper then big cities. We use a cash-in-hand excellent sole trader to clean for us, not a big company, and she charges - you guessed it - £15 per hour.

I don't think you'll find someone good, reliable and trustworthy who charges less, honestly.

So you'd need to either make some savings elsewhere to pay for this, or find another way to manage your anxiety about your house... Best of luck.

Saw this recently on a local FB page - thought it was apt for here.