May 31, 2018 by Sean Parry
SHOULD I HAVE A CLEAN WEEKLY OR FORTNIGHTLY?
Our general advice is that it is better to clean your home properly and less regularly, rather than cleaning specific rooms every time (and leaving other parts uncleaned). If anything, you’ll see a bigger difference and feel like you’re getting good value for your money. If you come back and half of your home is untouched, you might feel a little aggrieved at spending your hard earned money.
With this in mind, it’s worth considering the following 4 things:
1) Decide on your monthly budget. The first thing in determining how regularly you should have a clean and for how long each time, is to decide what your monthly budget is. With most cleaners pricing on a price per hour basis, you can then decide how to allocate those hours – either for a more thorough clean less regularly, or a quicker maintenance cleaner more regularly.
2) What would you like cleaning each time? It’s a good idea to have a checklist in mind to share with your cleaner to make sure everything is clear. We’d recommended finding a standard checklist you might find online, and then tailoring it if necessary. If you’ve come across the checklist from a cleaning company, they should give you a good idea about how long the checklist will take to complete.
3) How busy is the household? Now that you have a checklist in mind, you should also consider how many people are living at home, if there are any children and if all the rooms are used. For example, children at home might suggest a messier home (!), and more time required for tidying. This items will influence how much time will be required to complete the checklist.
4) What about deep clean items? As well as items that should be cleaner regularly (such as wiping down bathroom surfaces), there are other deep clean items that might need a less regular clean – such as cleaning the inside of the fridge or wiping out the kitchen cabinets. Depending on how much you use them and how much dirt has accumulated, you’ll also want to consider how often these need cleaning. Including them in your weekly or fortnightly clean is probably unnecessary – but you may opt to have these cleaned every couple of months or so – and it’s perfectly reasonable to ask your cleaner to rotate such items. So for example if you had 4 deep clean items that you wanted cleaning every month, then you could ask your cleaner to cover 1 item each week.
SO, SHOULD I GO WEEKLY OR FORTNIGHTLY? To maintain a good level of cleanliness in your household, you should really be doing a little bit of cleaning everyday. And unless large sections of your home are unused or you travel extensively for example, we would probably advise leaving it all to your weekly or fortnightly cleaner visit. View your cleaner as someone who helps with your everyday cleaning rather than doing it all. And then with your budget in mind, weigh up the costs of having a more regular cleaner with the time it saves you doing it.
Finally, trialling a weekly clean and then then switching to fortnightly (or vice versa) is perfectly reasonable to see if the difference is worth the additional cost. At Neat, we offer both weekly and fortnightly service covering the central London area. For more information, click here.