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Housekeeping

Find cleaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Housekeeping forum.

Cleaners - is it us?

1 reply

Cuppa2 · 09/08/2023 15:23

We have gone through 3 cleaners in a year and I’m wondering if it’s us or them.

we have a small 2 bed house, and are really minimalist. We literally have nothing out and make a point of tidying before the cleaner comes so they don’t have to move a single thing. We also have a new build so everything is brand new - no stains or mould etc.

We have 3 hours a week and we ask they:

  • hoover and mop downstairs
  • dust surfaces (2 bedrooms, lounge, kitchen)
  • clean bathroom, including mop the floor
  • hoover stairs & upstairs

anything else they do we see as a bonus

Our first cleaner was great but gave up her business :(

second cleaner started off great but then started to come for less and less time but charge the full time. I’ll admit we were too nice to call her out as she generally did a good job. But then she also started to miss a lot of easy stuff - like didn’t wipe the kitchen sides at all one week. We stopped using her as it was every week something was missed.

our new cleaner who started a couple of months ago started off amazing, couldn’t believe how much she got done in 3 hours and both said it was cleaner than when we moved into it when it was new!. But same as before, started to go downhill and miss stuff. Downstairs definitely not mopped and bathroom floor not hoovered or mopped. This week the lounge hasn’t been dusted at all.

its always the same. They start off amazing and tell us they love cleaning our house because it’s new and minimalist. Then a month or so in they start missing stuff and leaving early.

do they just sense us as easy marks or something because we are young (early 20s?). Even when we do message to ask them to make sure they dust the lounge as it’s important to us, they say they have when they very clearly haven’t.

what are we doing wrong?

OP posts:
Treehouz · 11/10/2023 08:26

Hi @Cuppa2 - it's definitely not you. I have had the same and so have many other people I know.
Either they are unreliable and start cancelling/ working shorter days or they just become generally sloppy with the cleaning after some time.

The last cleaner I trialled spent 7 hours in my house one day and not a single room looked any different to how I had left it that morning. Since then I have been doing my own cleaning as I was paying all this money out and my life wasn't being made easier in any way at all.

I would either try using a professional cleaning company (rather than a self-employed cleaner) or I would only hire a self-employed cleaner recommended by someone who has used them for a long time.

After a long time, I now have a new self-employed cleaner arriving today for a trial and this one has been recommended to me by a relative so will see how she gets on.

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