Anyone who employs a cleaner???

I have to pay £9.50 an hour, and I keep thinking that it is more than I get paid per hour! (My husband pays the cleaner and she doesn't come regularly).
However, she will do anything including decorating so we have redecorated two houses in the past two years - well she did it mostly and I was her assistant!

I know what you mean about £10 being quite a lot. If you are happy then I think you are going to have to pay up, although maybe point out that it is a big increase! If you are going out to work all day then you would get less an hour, but if she has to pay for travelling to your house for a couple of hours then I guess that is the going rate.

As for the holdiay - surely having a clean and tidy house all year round is better than a holiday, much more restful.
 
don't forget that most self employed cleaners do NOT get holiday pay or sick pay & have to pay their own national insurance stamp out of their own pocket, so 'that £10' averages out to a lot less! I'm a cleaner (£10per hour) & for the hours I do minus the holiday & odd sick day my hourly rate plummets to £5.75!!!! so realistically not a great wage eh!!
 
firstponyMinto - that's what bugs me about cleaners charging £8-10 per hour when they aren't declaring their income, aren't insured, etc.. The net income for somebody who has bothered to do it properly will be more like £5-6 per hour, which seems wholly unfair.
 
I am a cleaner and get £8 an hour in a rural area. I don't get paid for holidays or sick leave, which means I very rarely take time off. I cycle to 2 of my jobs but drive to the 3rd. If you want to find the going rate for cleaners in your area check out the ads, either for people advertising for cleaners or cleaners advertising for work , but you may find there aren't many of the latter. I do declare my income, but don't earn enough to pay tax.
 
I second those who say pay her! Yes, it is a large increase but the actual rate she is asking now is not that high and I would say that it is well worth it if you already have a good relationship with her and you know that she does the job to your satisfaction.
 
I have a cleaner who is very reasonably priced, does a very thorough job, everything except the ironing, very trustworthy, but does give a bit of back chat. Hourly rate £0 answers to the name Husband.

:D :D :D
 
Figure out how much you would want to be paid for cleaning someone else's loos and picking someone else's hair out of plug holes, and then see if £10 an hour sounds expensive or not:)
 
Also people who are self employed in the service industry tend not to do small increases every year, so any increase every 2 or 3 years seems bigger..... I'm a Nail Tech and put my rebalance price up from £20 to £25 in Feb 08, and have just increased it to £27 from 1st June. Lots of my costs, particularly fuel, have gone up considerably in that time......

I have a cleaner and we swap services - I rebalance her nails every 2 weeks and she cleans for me every 2 weeks in exchange. I believe she charges £10 per hour, and she is worth every penny!! She is reliable, trustworthy, thorough and happy to do extra bits if I ask (and sometimes just because she has spotted it needs doing).

As others have said though the £10 per hour has to cover plenty of overheads - tax, NI, fuel, pensions contributions, life insurance, liability insurance, advertising, etc.....
 
Vetty said:
Also people who are self employed in the service industry tend not to do small increases every year, so any increase every 2 or 3 years seems bigger..... I'm a Nail Tech and put my rebalance price up from £20 to £25 in Feb 08, and have just increased it to £27 from 1st June. Lots of my costs, particularly fuel, have gone up considerably in that time......

I have a cleaner and we swap services - I rebalance her nails every 2 weeks and she cleans for me every 2 weeks in exchange. I believe she charges £10 per hour, and she is worth every penny!! She is reliable, trustworthy, thorough and happy to do extra bits if I ask (and sometimes just because she has spotted it needs doing).

As others have said though the £10 per hour has to cover plenty of overheads - tax, NI, fuel, pensions contributions, life insurance, liability insurance, advertising, etc.....
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Yep changing hourly rates often means redoing promotional literature and giving clients notice and the risk they reduce your hours or change their minds, so most will leave it for a few years. Also clients tend to prefer nice round amounts so an increase in a couple of years rather than an amount ending in 63p is probably better all round.

I don't think £10 an hour is that bad when you take into account what it includes, hubby charges that for his freelance work (or bases his quotes on that) and it includes all sorts of things you wouldn't expect, his annual profit puts him on considerably less than minimum wage.
 
I've had my cleaner for 3 years now and she charges me £8 per hour, I recommended her to another friend and apparently she does charge £10 per hour now, she hasn't put my rate up though. She is worth her weight in gold and totally trustworthy. I'm actually thinking of paying her the £10 per hour as she is so good. I gave up my cleaner when I first got my horse to help with the costs......hubby suggested after a few months that we got another one!!!!

If she is good and trustworthy then I would pay it. £10 per hour is the going rate around here as well :D
 
Rowreach said:
Figure out how much you would want to be paid for cleaning someone else's loos and picking someone else's hair out of plug holes, and then see if £10 an hour sounds expensive or not:)
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Very good answer! £10 sounds very reasonable to me for someone coming in for 2h/week, but this is an expensive part of the UK, and I don't see how someone could live decently off much less.
 
We pay £15 an hour for 2 people to come once a fortnight - it's expensive but they were recommended by a couple of friends and for an extra £15-20 per month I'd rather have someone i trust. I've not touched the hoover since they've been, or cleaned the bathroom, hooray! It works out the same as my OH's gym membership which is how i justified it!
 
Tass said:
Not really horsey but hope some of you can help! I allow myself one luxury (don't smoke, drink - much! - go out or buy clothes) and work very long hours for not much money. So, to save having to clean the house when finally getting home at 8pm after attending to pampered horse's every whim, I have a cleaner for 2 hours a week. She has just announced that she is going to be putting her rates up from £8.50 to £10 per hour - an increase of 17.5%!!! I think this is excessive but just wondered what other people pay? Having not had a pay increase for over two years and, when I do eventually get one, probably next year, I expect it will be 2 or 3%, I'm inclined to dispense with her services but they are few and far between in this area of wiltshire and I don't want to shoot myself in the foot! As husband said, she works out to £900 per year which would buy a weeks holiday for us both! Any experiences gratefully received!
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QR: She suddenly has to pay VAT maybe? I don't think that £10 an hour to do someone else's dirty work is all that unreasonable. There's a reason they are expensive and few and far between. Someone who is professional and insured (and not going to steal from you!) is well worth that tenner per hour. Jus sayin.... ;)
 
Wish I could find an honest cleaner for £10 an hour...anyone know any round North of York area?
We used to pay £12.50 an hour about 2 years ago but if I wasn't here when she came it often looked as if nothing much had been done.
I think if you have someone you can trust to leave and know they will do a good job, £10 is a bargain!
 
It's not unreasonable at all. Look at the increase in fuel costs since this time last year, about 20%.
One of my jobs (!) is as a self-employed cleaner, in Kent. I charge £11 a hour and get it easily. That is because I do a very good job, all my work comes through word of mouth.
Self employment means you don't get paid when you take a holiday, or when you are sick, I think £10 an hour is fine.
 
"firstponyMinto - that's what bugs me about cleaners charging £8-10 per hour when they aren't declaring their income, aren't insured, etc.. The net income for somebody who has bothered to do it properly will be more like £5-6 per hour, which seems wholly unfair."
That's a huge assumption. I complete tax returns just like anyone else. I also have small business public liability insurance.
 
Rowreach said:
Figure out how much you would want to be paid for cleaning someone else's loos and picking someone else's hair out of plug holes, and then see if £10 an hour sounds expensive or not:)
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exactly Rowreach......one family I used to clean for wouldn't even use a loo brush, so you can imagine what awaited me every week & the shower cubicle had an inch of scum over the floor, which took several sheets of kitchen towel mopping before I could actually start to clean it!!!! yuk :-(
 
Blimey, I'd have sacked them!
I've sacked a few customers over the years, I do this for stress-free employment. As soon as I start dreading going to a place, they're history.
 
Blimey - a cleaner - what a luxury! I just clean a room every other day, then the bathroom and mop the floors on Saturdays and a top to toe hoover on Sundays (I don't have much in the way of carpet). I do the ironing while I watch the TV in the evening. I don't think I'd want someone looking at all my things in the house TBH.
 
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