Hiring a professional cleaner might seem like a straightforward decision. For the most part, it is, but it’s important to properly balance the pros and cons to determine whether it’s the right move for you and your family.
To help you out, this article will answer the question, is having a cleaner worth it? There’s no single answer, so use the points below to help you make an informed decision.
Factors to Consider Before Hiring a Cleaner
1. Size and Cleanliness of Your Home
The size of your home only matters so much when hiring a cleaner. While a smaller home will take less time to clean, hiring a cleaner will still save you from having to do it. Obviously, if you have a large home, the decision is probably much easier to make.
Similarly, how much cleaning needs doing will make a difference. A busy family home can get dirty quite quickly, whereas a single person living alone can probably go a bit longer without cleaning. If you have to do a fairly deep clean at least once a week, it’s probably worth hiring a cleaner.
2. What a Cleaner Does
This might be obvious, but a cleaner will clean your home. Typical jobs will include:
- Cleaning the bathroom
- Hoovering and mopping
- Dusting
- Cleaning the kitchen
Not all cleaners will tidy or organise. Tidying is specifically different from cleaning because it generally means putting things away rather than cleaning up mess. It’s an important distinction to make because you may need to still tidy a room before a cleaner comes round.
If you want tidying and perhaps help with laundry, you’ll want a housekeeper instead.
3. How Busy Are You?
If you’re a working parent, hiring a cleaner is probably a no-brainer. Sure, you can likely find time at the weekend to clean the house, but if you only get 2 days off a week, why waste them?
Similarly, if you find yourself cleaning in the evening (other than normal daily jobs), hiring a cleaner will take a lot of the stress away.
Of course, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t hire a cleaner if you don’t have kids. However, it’s generally accepted that parents will be busier because they have to care for both themselves and their children. Theoretically, too, childless adults won’t have as messy homes.
4. Do You Have the Budget?
The cost of hiring a cleaner will vary across the country, but expect to pay anywhere from £12-£15 an hour. Obviously, this is money you don’t have to spend if you don’t have a cleaner, so it’s a difficult cost to compare.
But look at it this way: how much is your time personally worth to you? If you value your spare few hours at the weekend at more than £15, hiring a cleaner is a clear overall benefit. Yes, you might be out of pocket financially, but freeing up a couple of hours can have major mental benefits.
5. What’s Your Opinion on Cleaning?
Again, if you hate cleaning, hiring a professional makes sense. But it’s not always this clear-cut. For example, you might not have a problem with hoovering, but you might hate cleaning the bathroom or doing the more in-depth jobs.
This is where it gets a bit more complex. A good compromise (and a good way to save a bit of money) could be to hire a cleaner specifically to do the jobs you don’t enjoy. Depending on what they are, it could also mean your cleaner only comes once a fortnight.
The bottom line is that cleaners are professionals. As such, they can take care of the jobs you might loathe to the point where you just put them off. In this scenario, hiring a cleaner makes a lot of sense.
Is Hiring a Cleaner Worth It?
Unsurprisingly, no one can answer this question but you. However, the only “negative” to hiring a cleaner is the associated cost. If you ask most people who have a cleaner, they’ll tell you it’s worth it.
In short, having a cleaner is worth it if you don’t enjoy cleaning and find it takes a lot of your free time. If you can afford the hourly rate for cleaners in East London, it could make a lot of sense to have a cleaner.
