[Mrs Nicholls]

how can durations of clean be mentioned without first visiting the clients home?

We carry out cleans for all kinds of people and all kind of homes - sizes, layouts - clutter etc.

none are ever the same, even from week to week.

We start by meeting the client and surveying the property - you must do this to ensure health and safety is being followed, and risk assessments can then be drawn up.

We guestimate, on how long we think it will take say 3-4  bed house 2.5 - 4 hours depending on state, and tasks required, not everyone wants the same things doing. then just be flexible for the first 4 visits or so, customer will like you if you start at 4 hours then reduce to 3, they know you are proactive and not just out for their money!

I could never say how long it takes to clean one thing to the next, some showers take 5 mins others 50mins, even in the same house.

Different in commercial premises as the standards are different, and so is the budget.

Get a standards book from cresta booksellers.

Lisa

[Bertie Boo]

I forgot! I took this picture earlier, its the windowledge of a bathroom in a house i do weekly. This example is only an 'average' of how bad it gets, in fact by many standards it's quite un-cluttered.......

[Mrs Nicholls]

Thats one of the easy window sills, hasnt even got any mould and mildew condensation....

[Ian Gourlay]

Im not sure who does the cleaning Stephen or Mrs Stephen.

All I am suggesting in my humble way is if you listed all tasks on intial survey taking into account clutter etc and put a time value it would give you an idea of how much to charge.

Obviously after initial clean showers for example should become easier to clean.


Im not trying to say your systems are wrong but I still cannot see why the system I suggested would not work as long as timing were adjusted. What I would say is that work has to be do check timeings.I sell Window Blinds I was told it only takes on average 20 minutes to put up blind. "20minutes to sell blind etc

These timings were wrong.

If you are working on your own timings may not be so importantant but if you are employing people how long it takes for them to complete a task is important even if you charge by hour,as customers expectations of how  much you can do in x time may be different to yours.

And how do you know staff are not gosiping with customer or gone for a break

Daniel you asked question where are you?

[Art]

All he asked for was an idea! dear me!
Dan
On a 2 bed house you are looking at around 1.25 to 1.5hrs with 2 girls 2.5hrs to 3hrs total time. I would charge arround £45 to £52, this bit depends on where you live and how good you clean. hope its a bit clearer. phil

Hi Phil,

 Do you charge by the hour or by the job?

Arthur

PS Did you buy an envirodri?

[Prestige1]

Art
By the Job, Obviously I have an hourly rate,
Lisa all Dan wanted was an idea which I gave him, Lisa how many houses a week does your company clean? We clean around 36 to 40 houses per week, and I would say half are 1.5 hrs some are 2 hours and some are as many as 10hrs all with teams of 2, and if you were being honest I bet your houses have a similar times. I know what I charge on a 2 bed 3 bed 4 bed and so on. There are tough ones to clean and easy ones to clean so please don't try and complicate the things.

Stephen
I have been pricing houses for the last 5 years at least 1 a week and some weeks as many as 4 after a while you get a feel for it and with the system I use nothing get missed ,we will always pick up stuff the week after, if you have loads of different times your girls don't know whether they are coming or going.

phil

[Prestige1]

Art
No not yet to the enviordry, still undesided. don't seam to have a spare minute at the moment, I have got a very large resturant carpet in a very large factory to clean and would love one for that job, don't fancy manually aggitating the micro splitters in that place.

Lisa please, standards book? didn't realize you are still at the book stage, thats why you still cant price jobs right. and if I was to go through the process you suggest on domestic jobs I would be to busy to push my bussiness forward, the domestics I do are very much all bread and butter stuff, the real money is in carpet cleaning, builders cleans and large commercial jobs. when i price jobs at £250 plus I would use the process you suggest or somthing like it. you will learn keep at it.
Phil

[Bertie Boo]

Im not sure who does the cleaning Stephen or Mrs Stephen.

All I am suggesting in my humble way is if you listed all tasks on intial survey taking into account clutter etc and put a time value it would give you an idea of how much to charge.

Obviously after initial clean showers for example should become easier to clean.

Hi Ian

There is no 'Mrs Stephen', i do the cleaning myself. Your theory  is correct, that things should become easier to clean as time progresses BUT......this is fine on paper, in reality it is very hard when faced with a filthy home to know whether it is going to stay clean (or clean-ish) between visits OR is it going to get back into the state it was.

People never cease to amaze me as to just how downright grubby nay dirty they can be. Some people i clean for have lived in a hovel and yet with regular help they've been transformed and continue to keep the house is some sort of order between visits.

Others have continued to make the unbeliveable amounts of mess and dirt in a period of less than 7 days........with my clients its 50/50 between those who keep the place ok and those that dont....what some people do in a week has to be seen to be believed.

The problems start when a house finally starts to look presentable and THEN the client asks you to attend to other jobs that you said you'd do as and when, like windows and paintwork, front of house jobs etc.....they say "Oh we've hardly used the bathroom this week, so instead would you.....", and then the next time your're due to go they maybe cancel etc (it happens), so by the time you DO actually get there again you're heading back to square one.

It happens.

Some people ae naturally tidy and organised (i'm not one of them), likewise some people are naturally very clean (thats me). Some people are both but they rarely have cleaners  . The naturally dirty people can do untold and indescribeable things to their houses (quite how people get dirt in the places they do will always be a mystery to me) and with this in mind it is why i say that giving times is not always possible, nor is it fair to assume that just because the houses have been cleaned they'll stay that way.

Another factor in cleaning times is whether the cleaner has all the correct products and equipment to do the job and indeed has the correct understanding of how to clean correctly. A lot of the reason that i can work as effeciently as i do is because i have all the things i need to do the work and i know what products i like. Last year i took my sister with me for half a day (she owed me a favour) and she thought it would be a great oppourtunity to test out what she thought would be all the latest products and sprays she'd seen advertised on TV. I dont have any of that, how dissapointed was she when she saw me doing the baths and sinks with good old washing-up liquid, even now she still doesnt belive that the you dont need 101 different things to do one job...

As for staff talking and taking breaks, well, a lot of companies charge for the cleaning by 'the job' but pay the staff by 'the hour', usually with a set number of hours a day. It is then in the cleaners interest to make sure that DO complete all the work allocated to them in order that they can finish on-time or, indeed, a bit earlier.

Cheers

Stephen

[Bertie Boo]

we will always pick up stuff the week after
phil

Hey Phil

The ability to do that has got me out the brown-stuff more than once  ...there's nothing like finding out (eventually) which bits EXACTLY the client is wanting cleaned......once i know what the threshold is then i'm quids in 

Phil, on another (not unrelated point) why do people outside of domestic cleaning not understand that a very clean house is amongst the WORST sort of house to clean, at least with the dirty ones there is no doubt you've been in agiven it a good going over......i get the most compliments from people who live like slobs. I dropped one client as she had a 'show home' and -whilst the 18months i worked for her were about 16 months longer than any other cleaner she'd taken on and got rid of- she was never fully satisfied.

She was never fully satisfied with anything she bought or any work that tradespeople did for her. I was glad to leave than one alone in the end.

Stephen

[Prestige1]

I agree with your point on show houses, I try and tell my staff to look at those houses as a chance to get your breath back as there is no hard graft, also I tell them when they clean shelf’s etc put the ornaments back wrong so they know you have picked them up to clean, also if they have time clean things that normally they wouldn’t like external windows and frames, front door and step, so the client can see what you have done. Phil

[Bertie Boo]

the domestics I do are very much all bread and butter stuff, the real money is in carpet cleaning, builders cleans and large commercial jobs. when i price jobs at £250 plus I would use the process you suggest or somthing like it. you will learn keep at it.
Phil

Phil

Would you say then that there is not a lot of money to be made out of 'just' doing domestic cleaning UNLESS you are working on your own or in pairs....this is the conclusion i have come to, i have to admit. I do 'ok' out of it but its hard work and i wont make my first million out of it. Even if i had the business know-how and the financial backing i don't think it would be that lucrative just doing domestic work. The Molly Maid bumpf seems to suggest that there is plenty of money to be made from running one of their franchises......i do wonder  :

Stephen

[Ian Gourlay]

Phil,

Are you saying that if you have say a three bed house and your team should take x hours to clean it , if they go over its down to them,or say they do three a day it usually works out buy the end of the day.

Or do you pay them extra?

Stephen Phils the man

[Bertie Boo]

Stephen Phils the man

    

[stains-away]

Would you say then that there is not a lot of money to be made out of 'just' doing domestic cleaning UNLESS you are working on your own or in pairs....

As with any other service you are trading time for money, the only way to earn more money is to decrease the time spent to earn the money, either by working harder, increasing your pricing or more likely by duplication.

Duplication is the easiest way to earn money if you can gain the work and then more importantly staff it correctly, although in my opinion domestic cleaning is among the lowest paying work within the industry, theres a lot more money to be had in niche areas if they are targetted correctly, Andy

[Prestige1]

Stephen
No I don’t think domestic cleaning brings in loads of money, I think it’s ideal if you can do it yourself you should make a living at it, but it is hard work. I run my domestic cleaning very similar to Molly maids, the trouble as always is staff. If you charge a high price you only have to make a mistake for clients to cancel. why should they pay for a premium service and receive sub standard results, so it’s hard keeping on top of the staff, I lost a job a couple of weeks ago, we attended 5 days a week for 2 hrs a day £260 a week plus vat, paid in the bank every week, dead easy house to clean but staff let me down by not spending 2 hrs there. very very soul destroying. you can only make money by either staying small or going big, I go for volume each team I try and target to take £150 + a day for 5 hrs work, you only need a wheel to fall off to encounter problems.

Ian that’s exactly what I am saying, some houses will be easier than others, there is enough time to do the jobs, if they go over it’s down to them.

[Bertie Boo]

Would you say then that there is not a lot of money to be made out of 'just' doing domestic cleaning UNLESS you are working on your own or in pairs....

As with any other service you are trading time for money, the only way to earn more money is to decrease the time spent to earn the money, either by working garder, increasing your pricing or more likely by duplication.

Duplication is the easiest way to earn money if you can gain the work and then more importantly staff it correctly, although in my opinion domestic cleaning is among the lowest paying work within the industry, theres a lot more money to be had in niche areas if they are targetted correctly, Andy

Bloody hell Andy, thats very astute. I didnt know you had a serious side to you.

Well done 

Stephen

[Bertie Boo]

Stephen
No I don’t think domestic cleaning brings in loads of money, I think it’s ideal if you can do it yourself you should make a living at it, but it is hard work. I run my domestic cleaning very similar to Molly maids, the trouble as always is staff. If you charge a high price you only have to make a mistake for clients to cancel. why should they pay for a premium service and receive sub standard results, so it’s hard keeping on top of the staff, I lost a job a couple of weeks ago, we attended 5 days a week for 2 hrs a day £260 a week plus vat, paid in the bank every week, dead easy house to clean but staff let me down by not spending 2 hrs there. very very soul destroying. you can only make money by either staying small or going big, I go for volume each team I try and target to take £150 + a day for 5 hrs work, you only need a wheel to fall off to encounter problems.

Ian that’s exactly what I am saying, some houses will be easier than others, there is enough time to do the jobs, if they go over it’s down to them.

Phil

thats pretty much what i thought, when i sit down and work out how much money I could earn IF i wanted to do the work (and at the second i'm turning work away as i have as much as i want - sign that Autumn is here, i always get booked up until xmas, i dunno why) I do wonder how long it would take to earn the SAME amount by getting people to do the work for me.

By the time i've worked out the expenses  i know about (and i bet i dont know the half of it...) it would be a long time before i could think about drawing the salary i'd like. Plus, this cleaning thing was only intended to be a stop-gap but i love my job so much i've carried on...expansion isnt for me, i like being this side of the broom handle and seeing all the questions and issues that people have about their staff makes me realise i just haven't got what it takes to make it 'work'.

I have often wonder who in their right minds is comfortable in using Molly Maids (to name one of several franchises) when all they sell themselves on is the fact that they can make someone money out of arranging cleaners for others. I'd much rather pay a small business to do the job than i would someone who has bought into a franchise. I know it sounds daft but i consider a local company to be making a profit from working hard to serve their community. I see a cleaning franchise as being run by someone who doesnt want to get their hands dirty and thinks they can make money from someones housework needs.

Molly Maids is targeted shamelessly at people who had high-powered jobs in corperate banking and the like, people who want to leave all that behind because -reading between the lines (lol)- they can't cope with it (i joke). It's not that i am against franchising, but i am against some of the cleaning ones where the proprioter does none of the 'graft' themselves. Look at Kleeneeze and Betterware - the franchise owners are out there doing all the work and making a profit from the money they make on the orders. My driving instructor was a BSM franchisee BUT he still did  the lessons himself. I dont think i'd like to do business where the business owner only wants to be someone who 'runs their own business' for the sake of being able to say that's what they do...some of those MM testimonials used to say things like 'When deciding which franchise we wanted to buy into...', they make it sound like whether it was cleaning houses or putting lids on cans of beans (it's late and i'm tired, couldnt think of anything else lol) they would be up for it as its the 'running the business' bit they like, not what the actual business does.

Stephen

[stains-away]

they would be up for it as its the 'running the business' bit they like, not what the actual business does.

Does it really matter what the business does?

The way I see it is that you can either do a lot of hard graft yourself and have a return financially that will never increase that much unless you work every hour under the sun, and could decrease significantly if you are ill or unable to work for whatever reason (be self employed), or you can build something that you either work in yourself alongside others, or organise the work for others to do and spend your time chasing more work for them to do, increasing the turnover and potential profit and building a residual value, that could no doubt continue earning you money if you were laid up (running a business).

If your running a business from an admin point of view then it doesn't matter what the product or service is as you will have very little to do with the actual production.

[Bertie Boo]

....yeah but Andy, thats my point...that would be ok if you were selling soemthing from your own premises but i wouldnt like the idea of people coming into my house to clean knowing that -as well as them not being too bothered about working as a cleaner- their boss only picked a cleaning business as the best way for he/she to earn a salary. In otherwords i'd be happier using a company that was run by someone was running the business BECAUSE they had an interest and understanding of cleaning.

Maybe i just have a peculiar slant on it 

Stephen

[Ian Gourlay]

Stephen,

With your Anthea Turner aproach you have the ability to deliver what the customer wants.

You Anthea does not get out duster she  explains whats she wants and leaves them to get on with it. You could build a team and through quality control acheive high standards.

Kim and angie more hands on they do put their hand down the loo