It All Starts With Good Intentions
When the time comes to move house, you might get a
Well, feel free to get the friends and relatives to help you with the heavy lifting and moving the furniture out of the old house and into the new one if you like. But there are quite a few reasons why it’s a lot better to get a team of professional cleaners in to do the moving out cleaning instead of asking the relatives for help.
#1: Professionals Work As A Team
Professional cleaners who do end of tenancy cleaning for a living have a lot of experience working together as a team. They know what needs to be done and who’s responsible for what. There’s usually a checklist that’s approved by most of the housing and tenancy agencies, and there’s a proper team leader. I have been taking notes from what this London based company does – Anyclean (https://www.anyclean.co.uk). They seem to be doing something right being in the cutthroat London house cleaning market since 1998 and still going strong. However – your relatives. Either everybody will think that they know exactly what needs to be done or nobody will really take responsibility. Whichever way your family functions, you could easily end up with (best situation) some cupboards being cleaned twice because both Aunt Michelle and Mum think “I bet you nobody’s thought to wipe out that bathroom cabinet,” or else (worst case) nobody will clean out that bathroom cabinet because everybody thinks that someone else is going to take care of that.
#2 Professionals KNOW The Best Way To Clean Things
A team of professional end of tenancy cleaners will all have been trained to industry standards (at least that’s the case with our commercial cleaning company). This means that they’re all on the same page when it comes to the right way to clean things, and they’ll use the method that works best. If you (or your landlord) are particular about green or sustainable cleaning methods, then they’ll take care of this.
However, if you get your family together, then there will be at least four opinions as to the best way to clean. You’ll have the family member who relies on reading product labels and who will insist on buying (or insist on you buying) one product for the bathroom sink, another product for the kitchen sink and another for…. You get the environmentally aware relative who swears by baking soda and vinegar and will let you know precisely why these are so much better for you and the environment. You also get the one who swears by old-school chlorine bleach for everything and has still got a stockpile of the stuff now that it’s next to impossible to buy it at the supermarket – and who will get into a time-wasting argument with the baking soda enthusiast. Then you have the microfibre cloth enthusiast and possibly the Quentin Crisp wannabe who thinks that a bit of dirt never really hurt anybody and you just have to give things a quick wipe with a wet rag to keep the landlord happy.
In short, you have a recipe for several arguments, which can take the form of long verbal debates or passive-aggression in the form of “cleaning it the RIGHT way” once somebody else has done the job. However, if you’re really lucky, the verbal argument may end with “Very well then, I’ll show you just how well microfibre/bleach/baking soda/Wonder Cleaning Spray works and you can see for yourself.”
#3 Professionals Have The Right Equipment
A team of professional end of tenancy cleaners will bring everything needed to clean your old home properly from top to bottom – and they’ll make sure that every team member is properly equipped with sprays, rubber gloves and cleaning cloths as needed.
However, when you ask your relatives to help you do the moving out cleaning, either you’ll end up with five vacuum cleaners and no mops if you ask them to bring their own cleaning gear, or else everybody will bring so much that it gets in the way and it gets hard to tell who owns which bucket. The other scenario is when you say that you’ll provide all the cleaning gear but when your brothers are standing there with their sleeves rolled up ready to get scrubbing, you realize that Uncle Barry has just loaded the pile of cleaning gear into his van under the impression that it has to be taken to the new place and is now stuck in heavy traffic.
#4 Professionals Don’t Have Small Children Underfoot
Your typical moving out cleaning session as done by relatives usually takes place during the weekend, which means that the kids (yours and theirs) will be around. At worst, your kids will be having a meltdown and you can’t really blame them, as moving is very stressful for a little kid. At best, they’ll be enthusiastic little helpers who will want to have a go with the vacuum cleaner and the sprays (we like their style – that sort of enthusiasm about cleaning might see them join our team one day). In the middle, you get kids who are so excited about having all the fun uncles and aunties around plus the ability to run around like mad now that there’s not so much furniture in the room. Whatever the situation, these small children will get in the way and slow the process of cleaning down, whether someone’s taking time out to soothe a tantrum, whether they’re playing Let’s Chase The Spiders With A Broom or whether they’re playing hookey from the actual cleaning to give a small nephew high-speed rides on top of the vacuum cleaner.
Needless to say, professional cleaners don’t bring their kids to work.
#5 You Don’t Have To Feed The Professionals
If your relatives and friends are helping with the moving out cleaning, you kind of feel obliged to provide snacks or a meal for them as a way of saying thank you. This can mean more mess gets created just after you’ve finished cleaning up, or else that you get an awkward moment when you realize that the kettle and the coffee maker are at your new house being used by the relatives who are helping unpack the gear.
With a team of professionals, then you don’t have to worry about any of this – they’ll take care of themselves and because it’s their job, all you have to do is pay the bill once the job is all over.
#6 Professional End Of Tenancy Cleaners Won’t Judge You
One of the downsides of asking your relatives to clean your house when you’re moving out is that they’ll all get to see exactly what sort of housekeeper you are. If you’re the sort of person who doesn’t mind about this, then good for you. However, if you’ve been a bit sloppy and you know it, then you might feel a bit cringey and ashamed when your mother-in-law comes around to clean your kitchen countertops. If they’re nice, they won’t say anything and they won’t judge you. If they’re tactful, they may merely suggest meeting at restaurants or will bring food with them next time you want to catch up for a meal because they’re thinking “Is it safe to eat at their place? I saw the mould in the kitchen in the old one.” And if they’re not so tactful, they’ll tell you that your housekeeping really just isn’t good enough.
A professional, however, won’t judge you or your standards, no matter how messy your place is or how dirty it is. Trust me, we’ve seen it all and even if we are a bit shocked (it would have be really bad to shock us) then we won’t say a word and we won’t hold it against you personally.
