Category: Cleaning

How Long Should You Book House Cleaners For?

Have you ever seen one of our house cleaning deals and wondered if it’s worth it? If you’ve never booked house cleaners before, it may be difficult to tell what you’re getting when you purchase, say, “four man-hours of cleaning”

To clear things up, we surveyed our merchants from across the country, asking them how many hours it would take them to clean homes of different sizes, as well as what types of tasks they would normally cover in that time.

How long does it take to clean a house?

To get our results, we asked our merchants this question, then averaged their responses and rounded to the nearest quarter-hour.

What does standard house cleaning include?

To clarify the definition of “standard cleaning,” we also asked each business to explain what services they would include in the normal course of their work. There wasn’t quite universal agreement, but several tasks appeared in almost every response:

Dusting

Sweeping

Vacuuming

Mopping

Cleaning bathroom and kitchen surfaces

What types of cleaning take extra time?

Respondents were fairly unified on this question as well. Most said the following cleaning tasks go beyond the scope of standard service:

Windows

Blinds

Inside the oven

Inside the refrigerator

Laundry

Dishes

Baseboards

 

Learn how to create a house cleaning pricing guide so that you make a profit from every cleaning

Pricing a residential house cleaning job doesn’t have to be all consuming.  The easiest way to charge for a residential house cleaning job is to track your clean time and cleaning material.  In this article, you’ll learn how to create a house cleaning pricing guide for estimating house cleaning, condo cleaning, and apartment cleaning so that you make a profit from every cleaning.

So, you’re new to the professional cleaning industry? That’s fantastic! The one thing you don’t want to get wrong is estimating your clean time at a customer’s home like we did. It was a disaster!

Many years ago, our staff had to clean a 3-story home and provide 2 loads of laundry services for an estimated time of 2 hours.  It should have worked, but enough thought wasn’t considered for the laundry’s dry time and folding.  (Our customer’s dryer was old and took waaay too long to dry clothes.)

Even with the option to stop by his home first thing in the morning to put a load of clothes in the washer, then return after cleaning another home to complete his basic cleaning services, we still lost time. We couldn’t seem to reach our usual profit margin due to time and fuel wasted in travel.

eventually had to increase our customer’s price.  And to remedy this from ever happening again, we developed a system to charge for house cleaning so that we’d make a profit from every cleaning job. We never wanted to run into this problem again!  Never! And we’re here to help you do the same.

 

The Ultimate Guide to Domestic Cleaning Services

So You Want A House Cleaning Service But Don’t Know Where To Start?

I may be biased, but I believe getting a regular house cleaning service is a lifesaver. With what should be a seamless booking process, they come over and take care of the most annoying chores around the house and you come home to what now feels like a palace. The kitchen is clean, the bathrooms are scrubbed, the bins are taken out and if you’re lucky they may even change the bed linen.

house cleaning is an absolute luxury and quality house cleaners aren’t the cheapest thing around, but apart from directly saving you time and effort, there are also benefits not immediately apparent such as a more hygenic household, everyone stops fighting over whose turn it is to do chores and honestly it’s just super relaxing knowing it’s all done for you.

But navigating the vast landscape of the house cleaning arena can be daunting. You may be asking yourself some of the following:

What should you look out for?

Do I have to supply all the equipment and products?

Go through an agency or hire someone off Gumtree / Airtasker?

How much should they charge?

What’s typically included?

What happens if they break something?

Can you trust them?

Do you have to be home?

Saves You Time

This one is easy enough to explain. A house cleaner may visit your home once a fortnight for 3 hours to stay on top of it all. That is 3 hours that – let’s be honest you may or may not have got around to, but IF you did, it’s 3 hours less work that you have to do on your weekends or after a long day of work.

You’ll Have A More Hygienic Home

While many of us think of cleaning the house as a purely aesthetic activity and end result, the fact is that a good dust, scrub and vacuum (especially in the kitchen and bathroom areas) will result in a cleaner, more hygienic house. This is especially important after someone has been sick or flu season is approaching.

 

How Much Do House Cleaners Cost?

We all need to clean regularly, but sometimes can’t find the time or may no longer be able to clean as thoroughly as we used to. Time to hire a house cleaner to help out? Maybe. House cleaners are certainly convenient, but can you afford one? House cleaners can cost anywhere from $100 to $180, depending on the size of your home and the service they are performing. A $100 charge would be to clean a smaller 1 or 2-bedroom apartment or unit, with a 3-bedroom home costing $125+ and $180+ to clean a 4-bedroom home.

Why Hire a House Cleaner?

You might want to hire a house cleaner for a variety of reasons:

To give your house a thorough one-off clean

To be able to fit some leisure time into your busy life

To come in on a scheduled basis to make your house shine again

To clean while you’re incapacitated

House cleaners can come to your home and give it a thorough cleaning once or you can make arrangements to have them come on a regularly scheduled basis.

Hiring a house cleaning service

It’s important to hire a reputable, insured house cleaning service. Your cleaner will have access to your possessions and you don’t want to take any risks. You also want to know they can be trusted to give your home a thorough cleaning in accord with the contractual agreement you make with the service. Compare the quotes by price, but also ask for references and other proof of competence. Then you can choose the best house cleaning service for the best price.

Some questions to ask before you hire a service include:

How long have you been in business?

Are you insured?

How long will you take to clean my home?

What cleaning products do you use – are they environmentally friendly?

Do you have references I can check?

It is also important to distinguish general house cleaners from specialised services, like window cleaning. House cleaners will typically not carry out all these jobs, especially for tasks that require dedicated equipment. These include:

Window cleaning services

Carpet cleaning

BBQ cleaners

Oven cleaners

Air conditioning and heating duct cleaners

Rental bond or end of lease cleaners

Tile & grout cleaners

High pressure cleaning services

 

Residential Cleaning Services

Daily cleaning of student community bathrooms and public restrooms in the residence halls

Daily cleaning of common areas to include lobbies, parlors, study rooms, and kitchens within the residence halls

Removal of interior waste and recycling (recycling is done by Exterior Services)

Maintenance of the hard floor surface areas including dusting, damp mopping, burnishing, stripping and refinishing

Carpet care including vacuuming and extracting

Non-Billable Services Include:

Cleaning according to current codes and standards

Daily cleaning of restrooms

General cleaning of offices, classrooms, labs and patient care areas

Removal of interior waste and recycling

Maintenance of the hard floor surface areas including dusting, damp mopping, burnishing, stripping and refinishing

Billable Services Include:

Clean-up after special events

Refrigerator cleaning

Microwave oven cleaning

Window cleaning by external contractor.  All academic building windows are cleaned on schedule.  Residential building windows are cleaned by request.

Work scheduled outside of normal service times or areas

Requests for cleaning services, which require additional staff

Best-ever house cleaning tips

You may have heard the phrase ‘work harder not smarter’, but when it comes to cleaning a house, it’s all too easy to continue doing things the way you’ve always done them without realising quicker, more efficient ways exist.

KITCHEN CLEANING TIPS

To clean a stainless-steel sink, put the stopper in the sink with two denture-cleaning tablets and half fill with water; leave for several hours or overnight and the next day it should be sparkling. Then use the water to clean the draining board, too.

To stop ants entering your house, draw a chalk line on the ground where you want them to stop. If you live in a rainy area where ants are a problem, you must re-draw the chalk lines each time it rains.

To clean a microwave oven, add four tablespoons of lemon juice to one cup of water in a microwave-safe bowl. Boil for five minutes in the microwave, allowing the steam to condense on the inside walls of the oven. Then wipe them with a soft cloth.

To stop drawers from sticking, rub a bar of soap across the runners to make them glide smoothly.

To pick up small fragments of broken glass, press pieces of bread onto the affected area.

LIVING ROOM CLEANING TIPS

To remove furniture indentations from pure wool carpet place a tea towel over the area and then press with a warm iron. The heat will lift the fibres. Do not attempt this with synthetic or a wool/synthetic mix carpet.

To clean glass windows, add about one tablespoon of cornstarch to about one litre of lukewarm water. Wet and a rag or squeegee, remove excessive water and wipe down glass as if using regular glass cleaner. Dry with either a soft cloth or paper.

Use a vacuum cleaner with a brush attachment to clean the tops and creases of Roman blinds.

To prevent ash from flying everywhere when cleaning out a fireplace, use a spray bottle filled with water to cover the ashes with a light mist.

BEDROOM CLEANING TIPS

To locate light switches in the dark, put a dot of luminous paint on tape and stick to the switches.

Vacuuming a mattress, particularly along piping and crevices, removes dead skin cells that attract dust mites.

CLOTHING CARE TIPS

Stop clothes with thin straps falling off hangers by sticking small felt furniture pads onto the hanger just beyond where the straps sit.

To keep spiders or any other nasty surprises out of shoes you keep outside, (such as your gardening shoes or work boots), place old stockings over the top of them. Make sure the stockings don’t have holes in them, and if they don’t fit snugly over the top, use an elastic band to secure them.

To prevent buttons from becoming loose or undone, dab a little clear nail varnish on the top thread or onto the stem of the thread and leave to dry.

 

Things you can do to get surfaces squeaky clean

House cleaning has become something of a cultural phenomenon in recent times with so called “cleanfluencers” telling us how to scour and tidy up our homes. The arrival of coronavirus has brought a new focus on washing and disinfecting at home, as well as work. So much is still unknown about the virus that it isn’t possible to say definitively what kind of deep clean, if any, would eradicate it. However, it’s always better to take action, if only to avoid feeling helpless.

The website points out that many cleaning and disinfectant products sold in supermarkets can kill coronavirus on surfaces and recommends first cleaning the surface as usual and then using a disinfectant. It suggests paying particular attention to counters, table tops, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures, toilets and toilet handles, phones, keyboards, tablets and bedside lamps.

Here are some more cleaning tips:

1) Get rid of textile cloths, mops, tea towels and sponges. Use disposable ones instead, including good quality kitchen roll. If you’re loathe to do that, at least make sure you wash the more durable kind of cloths regularly at 60 degrees. Microfibre ones are good at cleaning up and can be washed umpteen times.

2) Use detergent and hot water on countertops and focus on fixtures that get a lot of hand traffic. These include obvious ones such as toilets, sinks, taps and door handles, but also less obvious ones such as keyboards, phones, remote controls and light switches.

3) If you have them, wear disposable gloves and a plastic apron when cleaning surfaces, clothing or bedding, it says. Clean your hands after you take off the gloves and apron. Throw the gloves and cloths in a bin after you use them.

4) Floors should be washed daily, ideally. Always clean the dirtiest areas in your home last. That is, do the kitchen before the bathroom, and the sink and shower before the loo.

5) If there is risk of infection in the home, make sure everyone has their own personal hygiene items such as towels and facecloths, and don’t share razors.

6) If you touch something you know is soiled, wash your hands with liquid soap and keep the infected person’s clothes, sheets, pillows and linens away from the rest of the laundry to wash separately. As with towels, wash at 60 degrees or more and tumble dry clothes at as high a temperature as possible.

7) The services of good professional cleaners are rare but the Sproose platform (sproose.ie) offers a handy online option. You can simply log on and book a deep clean.

It also provides a collection laundry and dry cleaning service, if your own washing machine is straining under a heavy load right now. Of course, if you’re self-isolating, do not bring in any outside cleaners and do not send your clothes anywhere until you get the all-clear.

 

Why deep cleaning your fridge is important to stay healthy?

The first and foremost step towards leading a healthy life is to keep your surroundings clean and sanitised. Then comes eating a clean and healthy diet that helps in keeping your insides healthy too. But to keep up with all of these healthy habits, one of the most important appliances to keep clean is your refrigerator. Ideally, a refrigerator that is being used regularly to store fresh groceries, cooked food and all kinds of sauces, should be deep cleaned every 2 months. Not only is it important to keep your food fresher but also to keep food-borne illnesses away. Studies show that illnesses caused by food are mostly because of dirty refrigerators as they become breeding ground for dangerous bacteria like salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

The most important reason behind keeping your fridge clean is to prevent the breeding of germs that can further cause diseases like food poisoning. We tend to pile up groceries without finishing the ones that we have stored already. This causes the old vegetables and fruits to decay and make space for germs to start breeding. The same thing happens when there is curry or sauce spilt in the fridge and is not cleaned on time. The refrigerator being the backbone of the whole kitchen and the kitchen is the backbone of your house, it is highly important to keep up with its maintenance.

If you stock up your fridge with fresh food every week then it is only human to spill milk and other liquids like sauces and curries quite often. In that case, it is advised to clean your fridge at least once every month with warm, soapy water. But if you are not so regular with any of these activities, clean your fridge at least once every 2 months

The right way to do is deep cleaning. You will need to empty your fridge entirely and then take out all the shelves too. Wash each shelve with hot soapy water and use the same water to wash the insides of the fridge too. Make sure you have turned it off from the main switch before you begin. Wash it properly with clean water and use a clean and dry cloth to wipe off all that excess water. The same steps are to be followed to clean the freezer too. Check for the food that has passed its expiration date and throw it away. Similarly, look for the fruits and vegetables that have gone bad and get rid of them too. Dry the shelves completely before putting them back.

While cleaning the fridge regularly is one of the best ways to keep it sanitised and to maintain a healthy environment for food, you can always keep other things in mind to prevent food-borne diseases to a greater extent.

 

Ships, Planes And Other Spots Are Getting A ‘Deep Clean.’ What’s That Mean?

All announced that they’ve undergone a “deep clean” in recent weeks after discovering that a person infected with the novel coronavirus had been there. That’s just the tip of a tall stack of businesses and consumer gathering spots that say they are stepping up cleaning protocols.

While cleaning for the coronavirus is not that different from disinfecting for other viruses, like those that cause the flu or a common cold, industries are tailoring the cleaning in keeping with what makes sense for them. Public health officials suggest a few common steps can be used by both businesses and individual households: increasing the frequency of cleanings, using disinfectant products that federal officials say are effective, cleaning “high-touch” spots and making hand sanitizer readily available.

But there is no universal protocol for a “deep clean” of highly trafficked public or commercial spaces to eradicate the coronavirus. Ridding it from smooth surfaces is easier than getting it out of upholstery or carpeting, for instance. And the key to blunting the spread of COVID-19 hinges on good hygiene practices, and a recognition that minimizing the amount of virus spreading in the community is the goal.

Deep cleaning is not a scientific concept and likely means something different to individual businesses or consumers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines for community facilities that have had people with suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19. It recommends that “high-touch” surfaces be disinfected daily.

But not all forms of infection control are the same. Disinfectants kill or inactivate germs on a surface. Cleaning can remove ― but not necessarily inactivate — viruses, though because all coronaviruses are encased in fatty envelopes, there is good reason to think that the same soaps that break down grease can puncture that outer envelope and inactivate the coronavirus, too. So that’s good news.

 

Deep Cleaning Service

A deep clean is the best way to ensure that your house starts spotless and stays that way. Over time, parts of your home – particularly kitchens and bathrooms – can accumulate layers of dirt, grease, and grime that a regular cleaning just can’t handle. When you book a deep cleaning service, you can take care of all those overlooked areas, since the following extras are automatically included: inside cabinets, inside fridge, inside oven

Experienced

Not only can using the Handy platform to book a deep cleaning service help you to save money, but it can save you valuable time, too! Rather than relying on random websites or wading your way through online ads to find a deep cleaning company

Skilled and Capable

Using the Handy platform to find the best deep cleaning service for your requirements is a quick, convenient, and cost-effective way to give your home a facelift. Saying goodbye to grime is an ideal way to begin a cleaning schedule, but it’s also perfect for landlords who want to remove all traces of previous tenants and get a property ready for new ones

Reliable

we’ll match you with the best deep clean professionals near you, and you’ll know that they’re up to the job. Honest customer ratings and reviews let you know how highly-rated they are and their biographies will tell you a little about their experience. However, even the most experienced of cleaners is useless without good tools

Flexible

whether you’re using the mobile app or your laptop to access the website. All that you need to do is enter your zip code and some details about the service you’d like and we’ll take care of the rest. We’ll match you with the best deep clean professionals who meets your requirements and timing.

The Essentials of Window Cleaning

Cleaning residential windows is a fairly simple chore because these are usually easy to reach, and not numerous, such as the case with single storied homes. Unlike commercial buildings that are often multi-storied, windows are hard to reach and typically abundant. Even small offices may not have many windows, but these may be hard to reach and dangerous to clean on the outside, especially without the right safety gear, training, and cleaning equipment.

 

The 5 Essential Items for Cleaning Windows

Whether you are a professional window cleaner or a home owner looking to keep up on cleaning your windows yourself, there are many tools available to make that job easier.

Here we will touch on the five most important items.

1. Bucket

The window cleaning bucket serves two purposes:

1. Holding soap while you are cleaning windows.
2. Storing your window cleaning tools when they are not in use.

Window cleaning buckets are usually rectangular, and this is to better fit the entire length of your washer so you can get soap on the entire length all at once.

Standard buckets are about 6 gallons and easily work with washers and squeegees up to 18 inches in length.  Smaller buckets are available, and may be more economical and space-saving if you are only working with smaller sized tools.

There are also round buckets and buckets on a belt.  Round buckets are the preferred style for some window cleaners, they are also more readily available if you are just looking for something around your house to use.  Buckets on a belt hang from a tool belt.  They are designed to hold soap and both a washer and a squeegee, making them a more mobile choice.

2. Soap

This is the liquid used to clean the window, and is very important.

Whether you use a solution from around the house (dish soap actually works very well for cleaning windows with a washer and squeegee) or a store-bought window soap, make sure you pay attention to your soap-to-water ratio.

More is not always better!

Too little soap will be more likely to dry quickly on the window and will lower the cleaning power of your solution.  But too much soap can cause an over abundance of suds and leave streaks behind on the window.

A graduated dispenser that pre-measures can help with mixing your soap and keeping it consistent.

3. Washer

A washer is composed of a fabric sleeve and a t-bar.  This is the tool that scrubs the dirt off the window, with the help of your soap solution.

Washers come in a wide variety of styles.  Some are regular fabric, some are microfiber.  Some have extra scrubbing ability.  Whichever type you use, it is important to wet and scrub the entire window, and keep it wet for the squeegee to remove.

The washer t-bars are available in solid handles or swivel handles, depending on your need and preference.

4. Squeegee

The squeegee is the most important piece of the window cleaning arsenal.  With it, you remove all of the dirty water.  This leaves behind clean, dry, sparkling windows!

Technique is an important part of squeegeeing a window clean, and can take some practice.

Squeegees are made up of two parts – the squeegee channel and the squeegee handle – and they come in a wide variety too.

Channels come in a few different styles:

• brass
• stainless steel
• aluminum
• wide aluminum

Handles also come in a variety of different types:

• solid
• swivel
• ergonomic
• zero-degree

Choosing the right combination really comes down to preference and your needs.

5. Towel

The towel is helpful to touch-up any wet spots left behind after squeegeeing, particularly around the edges and on the window sill.

Drip marks are the last thing you want after all of your hard work!

There are a great deal of different types of towels available, and these include:

• terry cloth towels
• microfiber towels
• re-purposed surgical or Huck towels
• scrim towels
• chamois

 

Handy Hint

If you’re a rookie, it is very important that you read our article on how to safely use a scraper on glass. It’s easy to damage glass with bad scraper technique but with some simple steps you can avoid all that pain.

Cleaning glass is as easy as 1, 2, 3

1. Solution

Make a window cleaning solution by adding a small amount of Squeegee Wash detergent concentrate to a window cleaning bucket half filled with water. The solution should just feel a little slippery to touch.

2. Scrub

First dip the window washer into the window bucket solution then squeeze out the excess liquid so the washer won’t drip. Wash the window with a circular motion. Ensure you do not over wet the window. Try to keep the frames as dry as possible, this makes the whole job easier. Before you use a washer for the first time it’s best to machine wash it first.

3. Squeegee

Start by creating a dry zone. You do this by cutting the edge. That means creating a thin dry border down the left frame and across the top frame. Place the dry squeegee on the dry cut edge then squeegee across with very little pressure keeping the angle of the squeegee consistent. Dry the squeegee before placing it again on the glass.

 

Cleaning Windows with Vinegar Without Streaks

Vinegar is a miracle from nature. Completely non-toxic and anti-bacterial, vinegar is actually beneficial to any surface it touches. It safely kills germs and is much more economical than chemical cleaning solutions. It’s not even harmful when accidentally inhaled or ingested. (If you’ve got kids, you’ll love that part).

The acidic composition of vinegar acts quickly to break down the kind of film that frequently accumulates on glass surfaces. When you wash a window using a solution that contains vinegar, the results will almost always be free from streaks and sparkling clean.

 

Additional Tips

• When using water for cleaning glass, prefer to use distilled water instead of tap water, even for diluting the cleaning solution. The minerals present in regular water can leave behind streaks in spite of the use of the proper tools and all the elbow grease.
• In case there are stubborn streaks or hard water stains on the glass, you may use pure white vinegar without diluting it.
• While cleaning, make sure you wipe and dry the cleaner on the glass quickly to avoid streaks. Plus, it is recommended to dry the inside of the window in one direction and the outside in another. For instance, you can dry the inside with vertical strokes and the outside with horizontal strokes to make it easier for you to find the streaks.
• Windows should be cleaned thoroughly from the inside as well as outside every few months or at least, twice a year.
• For stained glass, the Stained Glass Association of America recommends minimal cleaning. It just needs light dusting on a regular basis. If there is a buildup of dirt and grime, then rub it with a cloth soaked in distilled water to avoid discoloration.