What to do before the cleaner arrives

Almost every household cleans before the cleaner comes, feels slightly ridiculous about it, and does it again the following week. The impulse is completely understandable and mostly misdirected: there are five minutes of preparation that genuinely buy you more cleaning, and there is an hour of preparation that buys you nothing at all. This is the difference between them, written by the people on the other side of the door.

No, you really do not have to clean first

Let us settle this one immediately, because it comes up in almost every first conversation and people are genuinely embarrassed about it.

Nobody arriving to clean your home is judging its state. It is the job. A cleaner who was shocked by dirt would be like a plumber startled by water — and after a few years, the only homes anybody actually remembers are the extraordinary ones in either direction.

Cleaning the house before the cleaner comes is paying somebody to do work you have already done.

What is worth doing is different in kind: not cleaning, but removing the obstacles to cleaning. Five minutes of that is worth half an hour of scrubbing you did not need to do.

What genuinely helps

• Clear the surfaces. This is the big one. Wiping a worktop with eleven objects on it takes about three times as long as wiping a clear one, and it leaves eleven rings. Anywhere you want properly cleaned — worktops, coffee table, bathroom shelf, desk — put the things somewhere else.
• Pick things up off the floor. Toys, shoes, bags, laundry. A floor with things on it is a floor that gets vacuumed around, and vacuuming around is what makes the edges stay dirty.
• Deal with the dishes, or at least stack them one side. A full sink blocks the single most useful piece of equipment in the kitchen.
• Empty the bins if they are full, or say that you would like them done.
• Put away anything private. Papers, medication, anything you would rather was not moved. Not because anyone is looking — because then nobody has to make a decision about it.
• Make sure the equipment works, if the arrangement is that we use yours: a vacuum that has been emptied, a mop with a clean head, and products that have not run out.

That is the whole list, and it takes five to ten minutes.

What is wasted effort

Equally useful to know, because this is where the pre-clean hour usually goes.

• Wiping surfaces. They will be wiped, properly, with the right products. Doing it first changes nothing.
• Cleaning the bathroom. Genuinely unnecessary, and this is the room people most often do in advance.
• Vacuuming. Unless the floor is covered in something that needs sweeping first, this is simply doing the job twice.
• Hiding the mess you want dealt with. This one is counter-productive rather than merely unnecessary. If the kitchen floor is the thing bothering you and you mop it before we arrive, we will spend that time elsewhere and you will have paid for the wrong hour.
• Apologising. Nobody minds, and it costs you the first two minutes of a visit.

The first visit is different

A first visit is not a normal visit, and expecting it to be is the most common source of disappointment in this trade.

It takes longer — sometimes considerably — because nothing is known yet: where things live, which surfaces are what material, which cupboard holds the spare bin bags, which door sticks. And a home that has not had a professional clean before usually has a backlog in it, which is a different job from maintenance. Many households book a deep clean first for exactly that reason, and then start the regular visits from a clean line — it is cheaper than paying maintenance rates to work through a backlog an hour at a time.

If you can, be in for the first ten minutes. Not to supervise — to answer the four or five questions that would otherwise become assumptions for the next six months.

Things worth saying out loud

Cleaners are not mind readers, and the things that matter most in a home are almost never obvious from looking at it.

• What must not be touched. The desk mid-project, the child's model, the pile of paperwork that looks like rubbish and is not.
• Surfaces with a history. Natural stone that acid will etch, a wooden worktop that was oiled, a floor the manufacturer said no steam on, a delicate light fitting.
• What bothers you most. If the thing you actually notice is the shower screen, say so. Priorities are personal and nobody can infer them.
• Allergies and preferences. Fragrance-free, no bleach, a product you react to — all straightforward to work around when known in advance.
• Anything that is broken. The loose tile, the wobbly shelf, the tap that leaks if fully opened. Saying so protects everybody.

And ask for the same in return: a company that tells you what it noticed — a cracked seal, a filter that needs changing, a slow drain — is a company doing more than wiping surfaces.

Pets, children and parcels

Pets. Say what the arrangement is. Most cleaners are perfectly happy with animals, but a dog that is anxious around the vacuum, a cat that must not get out of the front door, or a rabbit that lives where the hoover goes are all things to know before rather than during.

Children. Not a problem, and worth mentioning if someone will be asleep — the order of the rooms can simply be changed so the vacuum arrives last.

Parcels and access. If a delivery is expected, or the building door needs a code that changed, or the bell does not work, one message saves twenty minutes of standing outside. It sounds trivial and it is one of the most common reasons a visit starts badly.

The general principle behind all of this: the more a cleaning visit is treated as a working relationship rather than a transaction, the better it gets — and almost all of that quality comes from information, not effort. Five minutes of clearing and one honest conversation is worth more than an hour of pre-cleaning, every time.

Frequently asked questions