General Chat

Does anyone have a cleaner?

I do most of the housework, but I have a problem with my back, and find vacuuming & floor mopping difficult.

OH found a cleaner. I was so pleased!

She was here this morning. For two hours. She vacuumed :-S No mopping.

Slower than a wet week!!

I have a wonderful cleaner. She's very thorough.

She comes for about 2 hours a week and cleans all through downstairs. So far we can manage upstairs. She came highly recommended and I realise why.

As an added bonus she's become a friend as well.

I was going to hire a cleaner but my wife doesn't want some one in for that purpose,pride maybe.
I do her shopping and some of her cleaning but not up to it all.

I speak from the other side, as I worked as a cleaner/mothers help when my children were young, as it fitted well round school.

I was treated very differently in these houses.

In one I was expected to hoover/dust, mop, clean toilets, do laundry, iron and clean the oven.

In another I was asked to hoover through and mop the bathroom and kitchen floors, as she did all dusting and polishing herself. Once this was done any remaining time was spent wiping out the fridge, cleaning the oven or any other work that needed doing.

In a third I worked just two hours a week, each day was different, I was told what she wanted to do and she would work along side me.

It is surely not the speed a job gets done, but how well it is done. In the first job, I will admit that, in order to get through every thing I was not as thorough as I would have liked.

Each job was as different as my employers, in some of them I became a friend, laughing and chatting with them over a quick cup of coffee, in another I was 'our cleaner' and as so expected to 'know my place' and to stop what I was doing to serve coffee to them and their friends in the drawing room.

There are good and bad cleaners, but there are also good and bad employers.

The knowledge of what needs doing in an allotted time indicates the amount of time that can be spent on each job.

I do the dusting etc. I only need someone to do the floors, and things I can't reach properly, like table & chair legs.

I can't believe she took two hours to vacuum! It's a biggish house, but it's not a mansion.

And............she kept telling me she had a bad back, she complained that our vacuum cleaner is too heavy, and she's bringing her own next time!

I assumed she vacuumed the whole house. No, she didn't do the bathrooms, or the upstairs landing!

How do I tell her??

:-(

I do hope you employed her on a trial basis.. a cleaner with a bad back is in the wrong job.

If she found your hoover heavy it could explain why she was so slow, had she perhaps got it on the wrong setting?

You could try try giving her a job list to make it clear what you expect her to do for her wages

ie,
Hoover bedrooms
Hoover & mop bathroom & kitchen
Dust/polish table/chair legs
Wipe/dust skirting boards

I dream of having a cleaner but would need to spruce up before I hired one.

Did do cleaning while I was at college. The woman was quite high powered and always immaculate,which was more than you could say for her house!

We agreed that I should do upstairs on a certain day and,once,having to go up to get something on a different day,I found out why. They must have spent the night before I cleaned clearing up.Floor was high with clothes and God knows what!

We had Fred hoovering after he had been home a couple of days,him holding vac and other half pushing his wheelchair,which was more hoovering than he ever did before the stroke!

We feel we ought to get a cleaner because no I'm not lazy nor is my wife;our legs are now arthritic and some of the cleaning chores aren't easy any longer.

It took me months of drip feeding before OH would agree to having a cleaner - now and then. I explained to lady and said I guessed it would not be long before he changed his mind!

In she came for 2 hrs - asked what do you want doing? Windows please. We have 14 plus front and back porches mainly glazed. I did say take your time rather than rush it.

She came 2 weeks later - this time I wanted the kitchen cupboards washed and sorted. OH and she did them together. After she went he said he appreciated it and wondered if she would come every 2 weeks!

Although she is booked up I have asked if and when she is free, will she come every week. She just asks each week, upstairs/downstairs/ironing.

She is a treasure. Try on recommendations, agencies usually cost twice as much and the cleaner is lucky to get half.

My Dad had a cleaner, who also "does" for quite a few others in the same retirement complex. Her cleaning leaves a lot to be desired, as I'm now finding out as I clear his flat. But - she brings a ray of sunshine and much needed companionship to her "old folks", she adores them, and they love her in return.

Somebody in the village would always do a bit of cleaning for people for a back-hander. It was a very vital part of the village economy and the village spirit but now the job has very much been taken over by organized franchises with proper employees.

There are still some people who go out cleaning privately but I feel it is making something that was flexible and somewhat mutually supportive into just another way to make money.

The woman told me she's looking for more work. A biggish hint that she wants recommending to others :-(

OH met her through a friend, part of the conversation was that she needed her lawns cut etc etc....... so OH offered to cut her lawn if she did "some" housework.

I'm stuck in the middle.

I'll see how she goes over the next few weeks.

I also used to do cleaning for other people, both as a local authority home help, and later, privately. Just a few notes for people who are not used to employing cleaners: (from the 'other' side)

It always takes longer to do even basic cleaning on your 1st & 2nd visits - until you become accustomed to the house layout, the quality of the hoover, where everything is kept, timing of the different tasks. On subsequent visits, you get throught the work more quickly & then have time to spot extras, like dusting skirting boards, or cleaning cupboard fronts, or giving furniture a proper wax polishing.

The kitchen and the bathroom always take the longest time to clean properly as you often have to tidy up first, & also they do have a lot of equipment in them, eg sinks full of pots and pans, windowsills with plants and ornaments, bathtubs, showers, loos, washbasins, windows.

I always used to treat the house and belongings as if they were my own, being very careful and considerate. I always put things back in their exact place where I had found them.

I tried to leave the house pretty immaculate, given the time constraints. I often got compliments about how nice it was to wake up the day after I had been and all the floors were clean.

I would have a cleaner if I could justify it - I still do all my own but don't always feel in the mood.

Vicki

I didn't expect her to do anything other than vacuum & mop the floors!

I've realised since that she missed three rooms (not including the bathrooms).

I did expect the skirting boards to be done, but they weren't.

I TOLD her that I can't bend for any length of time, because my back siezes up and I can't move.

I keep my cleaning bits & pieces in a plastic toolbox....... I polished the dining table this morning, and found a wet cloth in the toolbox. No idea how it got there, because it was NOT me!

NOT impressed