I class myself as being in a very fortunate position. In a short space of time I have managed to build up a good sized client base of clients who I value immensely. But the statement in the title of this blog entry is one that I’ve heard many times.

Very often talking about money feels extremely awkward……its an elephant in the room. So I thought I would address it on here.

The £12 per hour is just a figure I will use for the purposes of this blog entry. Oh believe me……. I have heard prospective clients say that their previous cleaner charged even less than that.

Unfortunately the cleaning industry is not regulated. This isn’t something that I’m used to having come from the world of healthcare professionals where training, continuous practice development and regulation are key to delivering a safe, high quality, professional care and service.

Unfortunately anyone can turn up at your home professing be a professional cleaner. They may not be insured, trained, background checked and may end up causing untold damage to your property and even yours or their health.

Take for example the case of the office cleaner who mixed two cleaning chemicals together – both were bleach based. The two chemicals reacted and produced chlorine gas – the cleaner died.

As professional cleaners rule number one in the book is “NEVER MIX CLEANING CHEMICALS TOGETHER!!!”

So as you can see, training is a huge factor when considering hiring a cleaner. But that training costs.

Also on the list of “must haves” as a professional cleaner is public liability insurance cover. Be it that beautiful china figurine that the cleaner just broke the arm off, the shower screen that is now on the bathroom floor in pieces, or the loss of your front door key which now means the lock will have to be replaced……all of these things are going to cost……in some cases a lot!! How happy are you going to be to find out that the cleaner you trusted actually has no insurance cover? Possibly not too worried….that is until the unthinkable happens. 🙁

Unless like me, i.e self-employed, I would imagine that most of you receive sick and holiday pay. For those of us who are self employed, if we don’t work we don’t get paid regardless of the reason. This is something that really hit home to me a few weeks ago when I bent down to pick something up off the floor and felt the ‘ping’ in my back. Cue two days in pain, being unable to work, appointments in my diary having to be rescheduled and no income on either day. Income protection cover is therefore necessary but again its costs. In terms of holiday pay – that is something we have to account for out of the days we are earning.

A colleague in the cleaning world recently carried out an analysis of where the £12 per hour actually goes. When you take into consideration travel costs to and from jobs, product and equipment costs, a tiny amount put away to account for holiday pay, insurance cover, accountant and admin costs plus extras such as travelling and time giving free estimates, late payment of invoices and over running of jobs what is actually left from the £12 per hour is £4.99.

What I haven’t taken into account above is I am a member of a trade association (Domestic Cleaning Business Network) – while they support with training etc, membership costs. So suddenly that £4.99 per hour has shrunk even more.

There are not many people who would work for £4.99 per hour – in fact it wouldn’t be allowed. Would you be happy working for that?

As all of my clients will know I provide all my own products and equipment. The reason for this is because they are products I know and trust. I know not to use certain products on certain areas of your home because of the potential damage they will cause.

In some cases when a potential client tells me they had a previous cleaner their reasons for parting company with that cleaner are perfectly innocent i.e the cleaner has decided to close their business or can’t clean for them at the moment due to childcare issues because of the lockdown. But all too often its because they have been unhappy with the quality and standard of their work. Very often those clients have previously paid practically minimum wage and are now happy to pay a little more for their clean knowing they are being looked after by a trained, insured, reliable, background checked professional who will care for their home and posessions as if they were their own.

Unfortunately many find that the cost of not using professional, trained, insured cleaners far out weighs the cost of using them.