Never had a cleaner, so no idea about it all. I was toying last night with seeing how much it might cost for a one off clean of the house, top to bottom. That led me online to a franchise company, and they talk about prices of about £100. Hmm - reckon even I can whizz the hoover round if it's that kind of dosh. Not going to happen until we sell perhaps.
Anyway, the FAQ for them includes
"Do you have insurance cover?
Yes, including £1,000,000 public liability insurance. In line with all other insurance policies, there is a £100 excess with all claims."
Are they trying to say that if THEY do something that causes damage, it would be ME that has to pay their £100 excess, and if so is that industry standard? If they are not saying that, then why would I care what their excess is?
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More likely that if one of their cleaners plugs a vacuum into your faulty socket and gets electrocuted, your insurance will cover the liability.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 09:23
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We have a "woman who does" - £30.00 a week.. well worth it.
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>> We have a "woman who does" - £30.00 a week.. well worth it.
I have a woman who dont. She insists she is worth it.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 09:40
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Ours charges £12 per hour.... which is more than what I get driving the van around...;-)
4 hours per week and well worth it.
I don't want to be bothered with it and since 'er indoors has been back working again and doing private tuition in the late afternoon/evenings it's only fair she's not lumbered with it all.
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My Sister-i-l got 2 East European girls in to do a one off deep clean and paid about £100. She was really pleased with the results, but they did take rather a long time............
turned out they were Slovaks.
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>> turned out they were Slovaks.
< slaps head and winces > Careful or you will dy son.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 12:27
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>> turned out they were Slovaks.
>>
They sound better than our Serbian one, Novak.
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We have occasional cleaners, a mother and daughter team who were here yesterday. They were smiling in both bathrooms when I got up dying for a slash. In the end I had to interrupt one of them. Of course they had both been awake for hours so didn't understand.
They don't do a very good job either.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 12:17
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I have a really superb cleaner. Brazilian, or South American at least. £10 per hour. I do hate being in the house at the same time as her though.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 12:32
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SWMBO does the odd bit of cleaning for local residents, 10 quid per hour, always more potential punters than hours she'll work. As pointed out that's better money than many people get for far more demanding work.
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£25 an hour here. This is an agency rate for a couple of slatterns fortnightly and includes the enhanced minimum wage that came into force today. They should pay part of it back to Mrs, Ambo as she spends a lot of time advising them on child-rearing, divorce, visiting their blokes in jail etc.
They are English, as is our very hardworking and conscientious jobbing gardener, who only asks for £16.
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Don't know how much the agency take for this is, but when my father was working as an an electrical engineer, speciality theatres, the agency fee for that was 20%.
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slatterns
never heard/seen that word until then. Is it a word used locally?
Oh yeah if you've got any more jobs at £25 an hour let us know ;)
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>> SWMBO does the odd bit of cleaning for local residents, 10 quid per hour, always
>> more potential punters than hours she'll work. As pointed out that's better money than many
>> people get for far more demanding work.
>>
We last had a cleaner in 2001, just before we moved. We were paying her £16 an hour, the same rate we were charging for driving lessons at the time. Whenever we put our rate up we put hers up the same.
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"Never had a cleaner, so no idea about it all. "
When my wife and I were both working full-time, we had a cleaner. The main thing that I remember was that it took us longer to get the place tidied up in readiness for her arrival than it took her to do the cleaning. We found her by asking around to see if anyone had any recommendations.
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My sister has one of those robot vacuum cleaners and swears blind it's fantastic. My wife won't countenance the idea that they could ever be any good.
We remain resolutely robotless.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 14:43
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>> My sister has one of those robot vacuum cleaners and swears blind it's fantastic. My
>> wife won't countenance the idea that they could ever be any good.
>>
>> We remain resolutely robotless.
Shame, battery powered those things.
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I guess you have to really hate cleaning or have one of those lifestyles without a minute to spareto pay someone else to do it. If you are a fairly tidy sort of person with a normal sort of house an hour a day shared between two people is hardly a major task unless you have some sort of disability.
Since most cleaning jobs can be done whilst listening to the radio it hardly seems like work at all.
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 14:53
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"Since most cleaning jobs can be done whilst listening to the radio it hardly seems like work at all."
You are fortunate to have that sort of self-discipline!
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It was my wife's birthday recently so I bought her a new bag and belt.
Well, the Hoover won't fix itself, y'know.
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We have maids. It takes a bit of getting used to in the beginning, having other people in the house, but once you get used to it its great.
Cleaning? Washing? Ironing? Not us. Not ever.
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Do you ( pfnarr pfnarr ) get them to wear, like, uniforms and so on...?
;-)
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They do wear a kind of uniform in that there is a standard apron / overall thing that all maids wear.
However, they were chosen by my wife. Models of efficiency they may be, but objects of desire they most certainly are not.
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Similarly my wife appointed Thai cleaners. Ladies. They are called Cherry and Porn. Ding dong, say all my mates. Not even with yours, says I.
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you did say cherry and porn?
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One part of my thinks "I wish", the other part thinks "Thank God, not".
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>> you did say cherry and porn?
>>
Yes. I have not named my daughter after either of them.
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>> Thai cleaners. Ladies. They are called Cherry and Porn.
My parents had live-in domestics sixty or seventy years ago, in another country. They were called Manikam, Pakiri and 'Cook', wore sarongs and were men. They were kind to children.
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>> My parents had live-in domestics sixty or seventy years ago, in another country.
Come to think of it there were also a useless boy who kept pleading illness, a driver and a gardener.
Quite poor middle-class people passed for very rich in the colonies in the mid-forties. It made some of them very vainglorious, but my parents were too intelligent to get like that, or to let us get like that.
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>> Come to think of it there were also a useless boy who kept pleading illness, a driver and a gardener.
Sorry to bang on, but when we first arrived there was a very lordly head servant with the Portuguese name Pereira. The parents didn't like him much and he left. They said he had been spoilt by the former inhabitants of our house, the members of an officer's mess. Pereira had had everything his own way for too long and couldn't adapt.
I repeat, my parents were certainly humane, unoppressive employers. They just weren't a bunch of drunk officers.
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>> Similarly my wife appointed Thai cleaners. Ladies. They are called Cherry and Porn. Ding dong,
>> say all my mates. Not even with yours, says I.
I'm sure there's something there about not losing your Cherry and hiding your Porn.
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My company accommodation in the middle east was fully staffed with houseboys to clean ,wash up and do the laundry etc......
In the UK we had a cleaner as we were both working.As we are now retired we don't really need help but keep her for a couple of hours a week to supplement her pension, she is older than both of us.
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My use of the word 'domestics' reminds me of something quite funny: a posh friend with a titled mother referred to Mrs Thatcher and one of her henchmen as 'these domestics'. Really made me giggle.
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We've always had a cleaner, we had a foreign girl for a while but she was clumsy so was dismissed after she broke several things in one week. Nice looking though. We then we got an old woman from the village who my missus chose on account of her cleaning abilities. We don't really need her now we are retired but it's a bit of structure to the week knowing she comes Mondays and Thursdays. The village gossip is well worth the £10 p/h as well.
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>> referred to Mrs Thatcher and one of her henchmen as 'these domestics'. Two henchmen actually: Cecil Parkinson and Norman Tebbit.
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I think that would be one of my more polite descriptions of those two individuals.
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We had cleaners when I was young.
They were more trouble than they were worth. Very fussy about things they would clean, the house had to be tidied up specially first, and then given a pre-clean of the worst bits before she would start. Pinched things, drank the sherry in the traditional way.
After going through a succesion of them. my mother gave up. They were fine if a) your house didn't need cleaning, b) you had nothing worth nicking.
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My daughter pays a nursery for three days a week so she can work, and then has a cleaner for 2 hours on a Thursday so she can look after her baby daughter and still get some cleaning done (looking after the baby not being optional).
The main thing that interests me about this is that by working, my daughter not only adds her own earnings to GDP but also the amounts she pays out. It also does a bit of redistribution.
Last edited by: Manatee on Fri 1 Apr 16 at 20:36
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And it probably about far more than mere money as well Manatee.
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>> They were fine if a) your house didn't need cleaning, b) you had nothing worth nicking.
One of my parents' domestics in that far-off time and country was fired for some reason. After he left he had to be pursued and brought back having lifted a number of objects including my mother's little false-teeth bridge, which had a former gold ring between the two halves.
Being a child at the time I felt very sorry for him and slightly took against the parents for their severity. I think they let him go in the end though.
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Not getting a cleaner - WillDeBeest
