What makes a good cleaner...

[ChristmasCrumpet]

We've had no end of bad luck with cleaners.

I think we were a little naive when we looked on FB for recommendations, and didn't twig that 99% of people were recommending their neighbour, solely because it was their neighbour, and not because they had any experience of their cleaning service.

We've had 4 now. And they've all been really bad. I don't expect royal standards, but I do expect when I'm paying a person who advertises a service, for them to know how to do it better than I could. It's a bit like how ten years ago, everyone seemed to set up a home business because they liked making cupcakes, yet had no particular flair or cake making ability, but still declared themselves a professional baker.

Now it seems the bandwagon is to set up with your best mate as a cleaning company.

The first ones (second time they came) were only there for 2hrs, and had microwaved some food, and left one of the packets still in our microwave. Stunk the house out, and if we're only paying for 2hrs, you can't be sitting about eating for 20mins of that! House wasn't clean either, they had used disposable wipes on everything and filled our bin with them. Second ones cleaned the floors with something sticky and it was like walking on a thin layer of tar. Left it all streaky too. Third ones we caught on the ring doorbell leaving after 45mins, when should be there for 2hrs. They left streaks everywhere too. The 4th used something so abrasive on our composite sink that they took the whole top protective layer off, then when we pointed this out, told us the sink was "shoddy."

If your cleaner is good, who is he/she?

Do you have a proper cleaning agency that you use and are they very good? Mum thinks we need someone from her generation who "knows what actual cleaning is" (yes mum )... but I do agree that the thing all our cleaners have had in common is they were early 20s, so maybe just in general what they do is acceptable cleaning now. My friend has a male cleaner who works alone, and says he's ten times better than the two female cleaners she had prior...has anyone else found this?

I just can't see how anyone would be happy with what we've experienced, I genuinely don't think it's us, I'm not a clean freak. But I know how to clean, it's not hard to do a good job. Who would pay to stick to their floors? And yet that particular pair of women are constantly posting their new clients on FB.

Please tell me how you found your brilliant cleaner.

We’ve had similar experiences recently op. In fact the lack of availability of help is one reason why we are planning to down-size dramatically , so we can manage it ourselves once our young adult and teen dcs have left home permanently.

In the past three years we’ve had one cleaner who brought her children and repeatedly altered the day and time she was coming, and was great one week but terrible the next, and she left early when she did come, one from a supposedly respectable agency who stole a watch (sentimental value), one who spent 45 minutes out of three hours chatting and smoking and she kept skimping on the actual cleaning, and one who was ill all the time and kept cancelling at the last minute and when she did come, left all the cleaning cloths, mops and buckets in all different rooms all over the house.

I didn’t think we were particularly demanding clients either. The house was always left tidy for them, the tasks were easily achieved inside the available time, we provided tea, coffee and biscuits and we paid above local rates.

We did have good luck about eight years back with two Polish sisters who cleaned together so they got the job done in half the time. They were pleasant, reliable, and hard working. They came on time, did the job efficiently and thoroughly,
and left. They were both in their very early twenties and yet extremely professional. Sadly for me, but very happily for them, they both returned to Poland and married and set up their own households. We are still in touch. 😊

I'm always boggled by the endless posts on here about poor standards of cleaners. I'm a cleaner and I never short change clients on hours, I clean to a really high standard, I never use their cooking facilities, scales or anything else, I respect boundaries, I'm reliable, I don't need micromanaging and I work really hard. I notice details and I'm careful with surfaces and products. I charge way less than the going rate too. Going by all the posts on here, I'm one in a million 😉👼

Totally agree OP.

I'm going though cleaners like a dose of salts, too. They are all incompetent, or unreliable, or both - and some are just piss takers.

I put an ad for a cleaner on Facebook and have received 85 replies but as I go through them they are falling like ninepins!

One today really took the biscuit. She asked for £12 an hour (the going rate round these parts) and asked for the duties. I explained that she would be cleaning 5 rooms, doing laundry for one person, making one bed and putting away laundered clothing, sweeping a small patio, cleaning downstairs windows and that occasionally she might be asked to prepare a simple cold lunch for me. She replied that I 'expected too much' for £12 an hour then blocked me!

You definitely are omgsally 😃👍

Just to have someone honest who arrives when they said they would, and then do a reasonable “good enough” job, is quite unusual in my experience ime.

Oh and it IS hard to do a good job. I sweat like mad, as it's hard physical graft a lot of the time. If it was a cushty job, then there'd be an abundance of people doing the job competently and seemingly, there isn't!

PS omgsally you should definitely charge the going rate! Why ever would you not if you are good at your job? Cleaning is hard work and I really respect people who are skilled at it.

You really are! I wish I could employ you.

The last one resigned in a huff because I asked her to prepare me a small green salad.

The one before that turned the cat flap lock around and locked the poor cat out in the rain all night.

The one before that one day failed to turn up or contact me, and although I rang her every hour for 4 hours her phone was switched off. When I eventually made contact she told me she'd not come to me because she'd taken another job that day. She still expected me to keep her on!

One before that took my damp laundry across the road to the launderette dryer, then forgot all about it and went home, leaving it there!

Others have spent most of their time on their phone; one even had a really long, loud and angry argument on her phone whilst standing on my patio. Others have left the back door unlocked, flooded a room, smashed valuable china, thrown away perfectly good food and put things away in such bizarre places that I could not find them for weeks. One put a whole pile of microfibre cleaning cloths into one of my bedroom drawers!

Please clone yourself and send one here!

Put a note on a notice board in a local supermarket. After a couple of bad starts. One that told me leaving a pile of clothes in the centre of the bed was not allowed. One that spent a full two hours cleaning the porch and didn’t make a start on anything else. We got a nice lady in her 60s who stays her full time ( if not longer) and is a proper hard worker. We pay her well. Give her regular pay rises. And would be lost without her.

@Tarquina ...preparing you a salad (albeit a small green salad) is definitely not a job for your cleaner ! A housekeeper yes, but not a cleaner!

I agree it's not a task for a cleaner, but you could respond with, "sorry, I can't, I'm a cleaner, not a cook," rather than just resign. Though there could be other stuff going on.

Sounds like you need a housekeeper not a cleaner.

First time I've ever heard of someone expecting a cleaner to prepare them lunch 🤣

I agree that @Tarquina has listed unusual requirements for a cleaner but even so, the job she describes doesn't sound onerous.

Laundry, simple food prep, cleaning and tidying clothes is what most of us do day in day out so it's not an unreasonable request. I would have no problem with any of those tasks, I mean why would you?

I think a lot of people see cleaning as a piece of piss and and because it's generally cash in hand, they can get away with not telling the taxman or the benefits agency. So they're just chancers looking for easy money.

I am the same, I see loads of FB posts but apparently they are all poor. I cant take the risk that they would come in and damage something / take the coating off my sink!

I was a cleaner years ago and i same as you. I was good at my job. I am a bit ocd so make a good cleaner. My standards are high

We had a wonderful cleaner who was a Hungarian lady in her late sixties and didn't speak much English. She was lovely with the children and the house was transformed.

Sadly she was travelling too far to get to us. We miss her every week and have tried other cleaners but they have been awful in comparison. Total waste of money. My particular bug bear is that we kept having people bring grown-up sons in their early twenties. They didn't want to be there, I didn't want them there and if I wanted to spray cleaner on a bath and then give it a cursory wipe through 6 layers of kitchen roll I could do that myself.

These days I just do it - and copy everything our old cleaner did. I learned a lot just from watching how she ordered things. So now I am time-poor but also better at insisting the house stays nice in between cleans.

It's some comfort it's not just me. No help, but some comfort

It's interesting that the only good reports are of an older lady (as mum suggested) and of Polish and Hungarian ladies, because my other friend has a Brazilian lady who is excellent (and alas fully booked) so perhaps it is a generational thing, and that our perceived acceptable standard of clean is far lower than other countries.

It's just frustrating when you ask online, and you get thirty replies saying "use ABC cleaners, they're amazing" and you do... and you get as PP suggested, the bath wiped with kitchen roll.

On our last attempt, we later went through all those "amazing" recommendations and saw that they were all in some way connected to the cleaner, mum, sister, neighbour, on a hen do together etc.

It just baffles me. I know that if I cleaned any of your houses, you'd be happy. It's really not hard to do a good job. It's just not being so lazy that you hoover round things and actually move them. And using products, and a cloth, not disposable wipes. If you advertise and want to charge as being a proper cleaner, you need to bloody clean properly!

Cleaning is a hard job OP. My back shoulders legs knees suffered..still do. Granted, if youre a crap cleaner nothing will hurt and it will be easy, but if youre a good cleaner its hard on the body and hard work.

Why are you so insistent that it's not hard to do a good job. Define good? It's hard physically if you really get stuck in, you need a bit of nous about you to assess a job and give the client reasonable expectations, you need to be able to communicate effectively, you need an eye for detail and the motivation to be bothered to move everything, week after week. So many people, including you, can't seem to find a good cleaner, so it's clearly more difficult than you're giving credit for. It's not hard to be a binman because the lorry does most of the work. It's not hard to be a decorator if you can be bothered to do the prep work. Once you've mastered a few key skills, you're away but I bet you don't level that at them.

I don't deny it's a physical job.

I think people are being pedantic here. It's not difficult to know how to clean a house. And that's not with kitchen roll and wipes. It may be physically hard work to clean properly, but people purporting to offer professional cleaning services should clean it better or at least as well as I can. And trust me I don't do an incredible job or have high expectations - that's kind of the point of this post. They have been rubbish. Don't move things but hoover round them (I'm talking laundry baskets, chairs etc that can easily be pushed to the side with your foot). Wipe bathrooms with disposable wipes, including the shower screen, leaving cloudy streaks. Leaving uneaten food in the microwave. That's crap service and it's not because I "can't understand" how hard cleaning is. I clean my house. It's not hard how I do it and it looks a darn sight better than the people who claim to be cleaners doing it.

Methinks some people are (deliberately) misinterpreting here...

There are crap cleaners and crap clients.

I have been running my business for 12 years. I have a waiting list. I cannot remember the last time a client left. I am not cheap.
My clients have T&Cs, we agree a list of tasks. I give them a price. I don’t work hourly and clients don’t get to tell me how long my work should take.

I supply the kit and the products because I know what works. I come home completely knackered and every bit of me hurts. I do a bloody good job and always give the client my best results.

Facebook is full of ‘cleaners’ many of whom are looking for extra cash, short term work until something better comes along. Often offering cheap services to het the work. Then they realise the effort, the travel time, the mileage, the admin to run a organised & efficient service and suddenly it doesn’t look so rosy and they realise they’re not making much money.
This is my business. My income. If I’m crap, I don’t earn money. My prices are what they are so that I can cover the costs of my business, my time travelling, quoting, communicating with my client, laundering and sanitising my kit, getting the best products, my public liability ins and still allow me to make a reasonable hourly rate. This isn’t achievable on the £12/rates I see on offered by cleaners or demanded by potential clients on FB.

I’ve had clients try to tell me how to dust (not because I was incompetent but it was their first clean and for some reason they assumed I didn’t know how to do it), leave tied up used condoms on the bedroom floor, forget to leave out a key so I can’t do the work and lose money for a half days work. Some people try to tell me how many hours it will take, wanting the best results on a massive house in a tiny amount of hours. One lady would lay on the bed in her dressing gown and watch me clean around her. I no longer do work for these clients.

My advice - go to someone who is established, where you can see examples of their work, someone who is insured and running a legitimate business that they’re actually interested in. Someone who has T&Cs so you know how they deal with cancellations, client satisfaction, security of your home and possible accidents/damage. Ask their advice about how long is needed and what can be achieved, just as you would if you were dealing with any other trade. If your budget doesn’t stretch to having the whole house cleaned, ask what can be done within your budget. Agree on what tasks will be carried out.

This is really helpful, thank you.

My question would be, how do I work out who is an established cleaner and see examples of their work? For example, all the FB people I've tried seem well established. For client confidentiality you can't see the names of who they clean for, just lots of gleaming pictures, which look great - but I now know they all filter the shit out of, because 2 of them posted pics of my gleaming house and the reality I was stood looking at, was absolutely not what they portrayed online.

How do I separate the genuine wheat from the chaff?

Any good cleaner should be happy to come out and see you/see the house/quote.
Do some research first- How established is their FB page? Are they a member of a trade association? Do they have a waiting list? Are they stupidly cheap as it’s the only way they can secure work?

Once you’ve researched and found a few potential cleaners, invite them to come out to quote. Some might say they don’t visit beforehand and I would avoid those. How can they quite accurately, understand your requirements and sell their business to you if they haven’t even been to the house?

At the quote, ask them what is included and what might be considered an ‘extra’.

For example, we dust skirtings at every clean but washing down woodwork is an additional task that we would charge extra for.
Do they recommend a longer clean first of all just to get things to a standard they can maintain?
This is also the opportunity to go through their T&Cs. Don’t accept someone who says there’s no need for any of that. Because as soon as one party needs to cancel or there’s any kind of issue, no one will know where they stand.
Get everything in place beforehand - What is included in every clean? How long do they recommend? What do they exclude (example I don’t move heavy furniture, If I hurt myself I can’t earn and there’s no SSP for self employed!) How much per clean? Are you paying per clean or hourly?

Remember, you’re trusting someone in your home when you may not be there. They’ll have your keys, alarm codes, they know when you’re there and when you’re on holiday. This needs to be a reliable and trusted person not just the random, cheapest person from Facebook

But why would she object so strongly? Surely if she is being paid by the hour, plus it's something she does in her own home all the time it's not a big ask?

Strange that she did not mind cleaning my toilet and scraping cat food off the kitchen lino, but objected to cutting up a few salad bits and rinsing them in a colander.

When I advertise I always put: 'Disabled lady needs help in running her home, mainly cleaning.'

I'm really flexible and will do most tasks clients ask me to do but cooking/food prep is a totally different ball game and I doubt you'd find any cleaner who'd do it unless it's agreed right u0p front. You wouldn't dream of asking the plumber or decorator, so why would you ask the cleaner?

I’ve got a new cleaner starting tomorrow. She’s not a ‘professional’ but I interviewed her (after advertising on fb) and 3 others and I chose her because she’s a mum, she’s local and she knew how to clean LVT, and quartz. I’ve had a professional clean in the past - 3 cleaners 5 hours - cost a lot but it was worth it, but I don’t want/need that weekly. As I am going back to work full time I want someone who can look at my house like I do and get it clean enough to be hygienic, pleasant to look at, no smells or crunchy floors (dog/beach). She’s going to do some ironing too. She’s going to do twice the number of regular hours for the next few weeks to help me get on top of things.
I hope it works out!