Is your housecleaner due to show up for your deep clean or your routine clean? Would you prefer your cleaner to have time to clean your floors, clean your toilet, etc instead of putting away toys, books or laundry that has been sitting in your living room waiting to be put away?

When you are hiring a cleaner it is usually for the chores that are more labor intensive than picking up items that are scattered around the home. That is more of a “housekeeping” task and not a cleaner task. Likely, your cleaner is on a set schedule and needs to concentrate on wiping, vacuuming, dusting and mopping. Most cleaners schedule per time blocks or time frames and need to stay precise with their timing as there are more clients that may be scheduled after you.

I, personally, work from a checklist and if there is clutter that is preventing the checklist then I will have to move on to the next item on the list. I instruct my teammates to do the same. If you are needing extra things (like laundry folding), let your cleaner know a couple of days in advance and make sure they can allow for that time it will take to do that extra task. I love helping my clients with extras but most of the time my schedule just doesn’t allow it if I do not know in advance.

Ways that you can prep your home for your cleaner:

1) Pick up clutter that is lying around your home. Is your sofa is full of laundry but you would prefer that it would be vacuumed while your cleaner is there? Put the laundry in a basket and in an area out of the way of vacuuming your sofa. Your cleaner may have to skip that area if their schedule is tight. Or if the kids leave their toys scattered around this will hinder your cleaner’s time to vacuum your flooring. So just be sure to gather the toys in a pile or put them away. Remember, you hired your cleaner to do the vacuuming and scrubbing.

2) Put away any personal items or valuable. You may have documents that need to be kept private, cash that you haven’t put away, or jewelry that is special to you. Be sure to put these in a drawer or decorative box to safeguard that your items aren’t seen, accidentally knocked in the floor, or stolen. As a cleaner, I will not open drawers or boxes to put things away as that is a privacy issue. I will move the items to the side so that I may clean the surface. Also if there are “adult” items please save embarrassment and put those away. Yes, this needed to be said, believe me! It is also an obvious hygiene issue and I will never move them to clean around and will instruct my teammates to never touch.

3) Have your animals secured away on the day your cleaner is due. When your cleaner is there to clean your pet may be a distraction for them. Also, it is never fun to clean only to have your pet immediately shed lots of hair or dirt in the area and you can’t tell it has been cleaned. We clean once and move to the next chore, we can’t keep going back over areas. I love interacting with clients’ pets but not everyone feels safe around animals so just be courteous and have your pet secured.

4) Inspect, identify, and notify your cleaner if there are items in your home that is broken. If your stove handle is loose and in danger of falling off please let your cleaner know so that they do not mess with it. It will save a lot of confusion in the end.

5) Always make sure that your cleaner has a way into your home if you are going to away during the cleaning. Again, your cleaner is on a set schedule and will need to enter your home without issue. So make sure she/he has a way to enter. This will save time and money, because you may be charged a fee for the loss of time.

6) It is often preferred that no one is home during the cleaning. If there is someone that will be home please be in a separate room and allow your cleaner to freely do what you hired them to do without being a distraction to them. There is no need to follow them around to give instructions on how to clean, it is what they do for a living. Again, the time you have them in your home is valuable and important. Allow them to concentrate on doing their best job for you!

As a cleaner and owner of a cleaning business, I want nothing more than to help my clients and save them precious time that they would have to spend cleaning. These are just a few of the things that clients can do to help their cleaners make their home “Fresh and Tidy”!

I hope this helps someone in the future!

Until next time….Be blessed and be a blessing!