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Is your cleaner giving you the best results?

When you have been used to doing your own cleaning it can be difficult to relinquish the job to someone else. You have your own way of doing things and a paid cleaner will have theirs. Perhaps they use their own chemicals, the odour of which you may find unpleasant or they may use cleaning techniques that you think may cause damage to the environment. Don`t be afraid to discuss this with them. They are there to provide a service. A good cleaner will be happy to go round the whole house discussing exactly what you expect and plan a schedule of work tailored to your needs. There will be regular jobs such as vacuuming of high-traffic rooms and bathroom cleaning and a rolling program of jobs in less heavily used areas such as the spare room. Your cleaner should however be flexible and if you think something needs urgent attention you should not be afraid to mention it; emptying and cleaning the fridge, for example.

Expect to pay £16 to £18 for a regular two hour cleaning session. If your home has already deteriorated to the level of those tackled by Kim and Aggie on "How Clean is Your House", don`t despair, some cleaning agencies offer one-off blitz cleaning to get you back up to standard. Then "little and often" will be all that is needed to keep it that way.

Cleaners will need surfaces to be reasonably free of nick-knacks in order to do a decent job. They have a set amount of time to perform their tasks and if this involves moving a lot of brick-a-brack then there will be less time to do the actual cleaning. Similarly, if your home has a lot of furniture you may find that cleaners will not have time to move larger items and dust will accumulate in spite of their best efforts. Perhaps now is the time to get rid of a few less essential pieces of furniture? A quick tidy-up before your cleaner arrives will also help them to work more efficiently.

We usually employ professional cleaners for one of two reasons, either we no longer have time to do it ourselves because of our working hours, or we can no longer physically do it ourselves. In recent years local authority help for the elderly or infirm has moved away from the direct provision of "home help" towards "self-directed support" with clients receiving a personal budget giving them control over the services they need, including house cleaning. The local authority will put clients in touch with cleaners who have been trained to a certain standard but, if you prefer, you are free to find someone yourself, perhaps by word of mouth. Do take care, however, there is always a danger of ending up with an enthusiastic amateur with a tendency to slosh the bleach around and tackle tough jobs with a Brillo pad, (not good news for your plastic bin).

Alarm bells should definitely ring if your cleaner is causing damage to surfaces. Reputable cleaning agencies will have their own insurance to cover damage and personal indemnity. Freelance cleaners, however are more likely to expect that your own <a href="http://www.gocompare.com/home-insurance/contents-insurance.aspx">contents will cover them.