What do you request your cleaner/housekeeper do?

[RuthT]

Not sure if this is the right subject area but hoping for some advice.

We have a cleaner at the moment for 5 hours and we are thinking of asking her to do a full day and upping her pay. I go back to work soon and will need more support if I want a relationship with husband that does not degenerate to shouting about who does the housework.

The house is not massive so a full day would mean doing much more than she currently does.

Does anyone have a job description or a set of tasks they request a cleaner do? Or for the hyper organised who clean their own houses a list for themselves?

Do you have seasonal or on going tasks e.g. clean windows once a month?

My cleaners come once a week and its a reasonably sized 4 bed house. They do the following in 2 hours but there's 2 of them so actually 4 hours work:

• hoover whole house
• mop all downstairs floors
• polish through-out (including cobwebbing)
• empty all bins
• thoroughly clean bathroom even toothbrush mug
• tidy up children's bedroom - make bed etc
• clean all kitchen surfaces and polish kettle/toaster/microwave etc

Generally make whole house look nice.

For an extra 4 hours i'd get the cleaner to do the following:

• put washing on
• ironing
• change bed linen
• clean windows (monthly)
• clean fridge (monthly)
• clean oven (monthly)

Oh and i'm pernickety about skirting boards!

My cleaner does 5 hours like yours.

She has regular jobs - dust, wash floors, hoover, get down cobwebs, do bathrooms, clean kitchen surfaces etc.

Then I have a section on her list (which I leave on the side) with the extra two jobs for the week i.e. window cleaning, clean fire grate, clean out fridge, wash front door etc

Obviously you have to check your cleaner is happy with these kind of tasks but ours was because it meant extra work.

Oh and mine does an hours ironing

Ours does 8 hours a week, but house not especially small. During this time she does the following:

• all our ironing (which doesn't take her more than 90 minutes as we are not big on ironing everything)
• hoover whole house
• mop the slate/wooden floors
• polish throughout
• empty all bins
• thoroughly clean bathrooms including loos, baths, shower trays and shower surrounds
• strip and change all beds
• wash bedlinen
• tidy and wipe clean all surfaces everywhere upstairs/kitchen/study/living room/playroom/hall

She whizzes around energetically and never once stops. This leaves me with - cleaning oven, defrosting freezer, cleaning fridge, inside windows, etc

I have a specialist window cleaner who comes every couple of months and does all windows inside and out, and all the inner glass doors. The service is far, far superior getting windows cleaned by the cleaner and lasts better, too.

I have also started sending shirts out to be ironed, for the same reason: the service is much better (and the cost is the same as having them done by the cleaner at home). Am thinking of sending bed linen out to be ironed, too.

any more?

I have a friend who sends her shirts and bedlinen out to be ironed, at first i thought this was a little extravagant. But, as Anna8888 mentioned, it is actually cheaper than when she paid her cleaner and it the shirts and bedlinen look lovely as i supppose the company has big pressing machines etc., Definately worth thinking about. Not for me though, as on abit of a credit crunch budget at the moment! Anyway, i don't work full time so can keep on top of mine