Choosing a House Cleaning Service

Finding the Right Service Provider to Do the Best Cleaning Job

Nov 9, 2009 Lynette Elliott

To get the best cleaning service at the best price, here is a list of questions for home owners to ask themselves and the provider when hiring a new cleaning service.

Home owners need all different types of help when it comes to keeping a house in top shape. To get the best service at the best price, it helps to know exactly what type of services to ask for. Here is a list of questions for home owners to ask themselves and the provider when considering a cleaning service.

Time Considerations

• What needs to be done, exactly? “Cleaning” is not specific enough in this case. The easiest way to answer this question is to make a list of the most time-consuming regular chores the home owner usually does and would like for someone else to either do or help with, such as doing laundry, vacuuming, scrubbing bathrooms, etc. This will become the list of desired services.
• How often does it need to be done? If laundry is one of the tasks, a provider may need to come to the home once a week. Other tasks, such as vacuuming, mopping or dusting can usually be done once every two weeks. Let the list of tasks determine the frequency with which a provider will need to come.

Guiding the Service Provider

• How does it need to be done? This is where it helps to be extremely detailed. If laundry needs to be sorted before it is washed, the provider will need to know whether he or she is expected to do that or if the home owner will do it prior to their arrival. How the laundry needs to be washed should also be specified—water temperature, type of detergent, drying time and so on.
• Who supplies the products and equipment? Someone in an apartment or just starting out in a house may not have a vacuum cleaner or other such equipment, so the cleaning service would need to provide those things. If a home owner wishes to use specific products, such as eco-friendly or hypoallergenic products, they should supply those for the provider to use.

The Bottom Line

• How does the provider get paid? If a provider wants to be paid weekly and the customer only gets paid once a month, it may create a bit of a cash flow problem. Or perhaps the provider requests a credit card and the customer does not have a credit account. The payment method and frequency can often help determine which service is the best fit for the customer.
• How much does it cost? Time is money, and in many cases, it is less costly for a customer to hire a cleaning service to handle the job so the customer can work longer hours or spend their time doing other things. For example, it takes Joann, a freelance writer who charges $35 an hour, 4 hours each week to scrub her house from top to bottom, during which time she’s losing $140 in billable time. ABC Cleaning charges $75 per week to do the job, so Joann is actually saving $65 a week by paying a service to clean her house.

Answering these simple questions can help a homeowner select the right cleaning service for the right price and possibly avoid a costly relationship with a service that doesn't do the best job.

The copyright of the article Choosing a House Cleaning Service in Home Management is owned by Lynette Elliott. Permission to republish Choosing a House Cleaning Service in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

House Cleaning Service