How Much Does House Cleaning Service Cost?
Almost universally, the very first question we get asked at Town & Country is “how much does a cleaning service cost?” or “how much will it cost to clean my house?” The cost of a professional cleaning service depends on a number of factors. At the end of the day, the price is based on how much time it will take to clean the home and what the cleaning service charges as their hourly rate.
Depending on where you live the hourly bill rate for professional house cleaning services can range from $35 to over $90 per labor hour. The time it takes to clean your home can vary greatly too, as we will discuss in this article.
How Long Should it Take to Clean My Home?
Right away we can see that cleaning service cost is determined by the time needed to get the job done. The way a cleaning service estimates the time needed requires us to get answers to several other questions. How you answer these questions will give a professional cleaning company a good basis to determine the time it will take to clean your house.
1. How Big is Your House? What Is Your House Made Up Of?
The size of the house is the most obvious factor in pricing. The larger your house is, the more time it will take to clean. This is pretty basic. Or is it? Well not quite. We still need to know things like how many bathrooms are in the house, or how much stuff is in it. It should also be noted that a smaller house might cost more per square foot, as the space is more “lived in”. As an example, an empty nest couple in a large home may only use a few spaces on a regular basis, whereas a young family in a smaller home is living their life throughout their home.
How many bathrooms do you have?
Bathrooms take longer to clean than bedrooms, as there are more details and surface varieties. Between two homes with the same square footage, the one with more bathrooms will take longer to clean.
What kind of flooring do you have in your home?
Carpeted floors only need to be vacuumed. Hard flooring materials must be vacuumed and then mopped. Adding the extra step takes more time. Rugs on the hard floor require special attention to get under edges. So, if you have two homes of the same size, the home with wall to wall carpet will likely take less time to clean. And, as we alluded to before, cleaning service cost is largely determined by time.
What kinds of surfaces are in your home?
The types of fixtures or surfaces a home has also affect time in the home and thus price. Some surfaces, like tile, take longer to clean because you must concentrate on the tile and grout separately, especially if there is a lot of discoloration or mold.
How Much Stuff is in your Home?
The “density” of your home is an important consideration. The more stuff in the house, the higher the density. The higher the density, the more time it takes to clean. A home with lots of furniture or collectables will take much more time than a stark, minimalist home of the same size. More care and time will be required if you have lots of valuable, fragile items.
How Many People and Pets Live in Your Home?
The number of people who live in the home and their ages affects price, as does the number of pets. A couple who tidies up a bit after themselves is a lot easier to clean for than a young, busy family. Houses with children tend to be the most challenging.
How many pets do you have? We love our furry friends, but they do leave a bit more behind that needs to be cleaned up.
2. What kind of cleaning work do you need? How often do you need it?
What is the scope of work? The type of work being done in the home has a lot to do with pricing. A Move In/Move Out cleaning is different than a Deep Cleaning in an occupied home. A First Time Cleaning will be different than Reoccurring Cleanings. The focus of each is different.
Move In or Move Out Cleaning
Assuming the house is empty, a Move In or Move Out cleaning primarily focuses on cleaning woodwork, shelves, inside cabinets and drawers, and appliances. We might charge extra if the house is particularly dirty.
Deep Cleaning
A Deep Cleaning is for homes that, due to any number of understandable reasons, have been neglected for awhile. They need a bit of extra work to get back into the kind of shape where people feel good living in them. Even a house that receives regular cleaning will, at some point, need a deep clean to get back into fighting shape.
Recurring or Regular Cleanings
Recurring Cleanings are regularly scheduled cleanings on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly (every 4 weeks) basis. Depending on your needs, we may clean every room every time. Or, we can work with you to plan a rotation, where cleanings are planned so that over a stretch of time, every room gets a thorough cleaning.
Rotations are beneficial in larger homes, or in homes where some rooms don’t see as much use, like a guest room, or the room of a child who is away in college. Having a rotation may allow you to bring your cost per clean down a bit.
First Time Cleans
To begin service for Recurring Cleaning Clients, we often need to perform a First Time Clean. A First Time Clean gives us a chance to get the home into the condition that we are hoping to keep it in. We need a little extra time to get them back into shape, thus a first time clean will cost a bit more than subsequent cleans.
How Often?
For Regular, Recurring Cleaning, your cost per clean goes down as your frequency increases. If we are cleaning in your home every week, it has less time to get dirty before we come back. If we are only there once a month (every 4 weeks), your cost per clean will be a bit higher, as we need to put in more work to get it clean again. However, if you are not home much, you might not need someone every single week. If you are home a lot, have a busy family, or children in the home, more frequent cleanings might be a wise investment.
Cleaning the interiors of ovens, refrigerators, and freezers is an extra charge of $60 per appliance.
3. How Dirty is Your Home?
On a scale of one to ten, with one being immaculate and ten being Franklin Street after UNC wins the Final Four, how dirty is your house? This seems obvious, but the dirtier your home, the longer it will take to clean it. How long that dirt has been there is important too. Soils that have been on surfaces for months or years are going to require more aggressive cleaning methods to remove them
4. Are You Flexible?
Where are you located? How easily can we get into your home? Do you really need us there at 9 o clock sharp on Wednesday, or are you not married to a specific time? If you have little to no flex in your scheduling, your cleaning service cost might be a bit.
Where do you live?
A home that takes a while to travel to might be charged a higher rate unless the owner is flexible and willing to go on a day when we already have teams working in their area. A professional house cleaning company needs to factor in how long it takes to drive to your home. Town & Country Cleaning services a wide service area that includes Pittsboro, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, and Durham. Some of our service area even reaches into addresses in Apex, Moncure, Siler City, and Sanford.
A cleaning technician may spend a third of their day or more in a car. A technician might not be doing anything productive in the car, but they still need to be paid for this time. We try to optimize routes as much as possible, but the fact is that mileage still costs money. If you are able to work with us on a day that we are close by, we might be able to work out a better rate.
How are the cleaners getting in?
If the cleaners don’t have a key to the home, a house cleaning service may charge more because they will need to wait for the homeowner to open the house. Town & Country Cleaning has keys for most of our clients, which are all anonymized with an alphanumeric code. They are locked up and only given to the team for the day of service.
Do you need to reschedule or cancel frequently?
A homeowner who cancels or reschedules a lot may find their next service costs a little more because we have missed so many cleanings it will take us longer to clean than if they had stayed on their regular schedule. This also adds administrative costs as we will have to let the following homes know that their time is now different.
5. How Much Does A Cleaning Company Charge For Their Time?
An individual working solo will offer a cleaning service cost lower than a professional cleaning service. Individual cleaners might charge as little as $9 per hour. Typically, an individual can be more flexible with scheduling. Most likely they do not require any kind of contract. Many individual cleaners are able to provide references to vouch for their character and quality of their work. There are numerous websites for finding individual cleaners in your area if this is an avenue you wish to pursue.
However, an individual cleaner most likely does not not carry liability insurance, or be licensed. Additionally, liability insurance will likely not cover any surfaces damaged by “negligence”. So, if they damage your marble by cleaning it with vinegar, it will not be covered. This type of coverage costs additional, and many insurance agents don’t seem to understand this very important distinction.
A professional cleaning company, like Town & Country Cleaning Services, will charge more. As of 2023, at Town & Country, we charge approximately $65 per labor hour. However, as we have said above, other factors may increase this rate. This seems like a pretty stark price difference when you first see the number, but lets look at why.
Why does a professional cleaning service cost so much more?
Video, courtesy of ARCSI
Insurance
A professional cleaning service will be licensed, bonded, and insured. This protects your home, in case something is broken or damaged. This also protects you from liability if there is an accident in your home with a cleaner. And, as we covered above, the type of insurance that a cleaning service carries is VERY important. Professional cleaning services should carry liability insurance to cover any accidents in your home, as well as covering damage if they make a mistake.
Town & Country, and most professional cleaning companies, pay for Worker’s Compensation Insurance, to cover our employees if an accident occurs on the job. With an individual cleaner, the home owner could be held liable for an accident in their home. This is a scary proposition when you consider that a simple slip and fall could result in thousands of dollars of hospital bills.
Professional cleaning companies will also pay to have background checks for their employees. You do not have to rely on word of mouth to know that the cleaners entering your home are safe. While these costs push the billing rate higher, the peace of mind they offer a homeowner is worth much more.
Training
Another consideration is training. Professional cleaners are trained to deal with different surfaces safely. They understand safe handling of cleaning chemicals, to protect your health and theirs. Professional companies often have other, equally qualified cleaners that can be called on if someone is out sick, or on vacation. Those employees are capable of delivering consistent quality in the absence of the usual team.
Individuals might be well trained. Or, more likely, they have picked up on various cleaning myths popularized by magazines, mom blogs, or even “Professional Cleaner’s” groups on social media. Some of the advice I have personally seen make it’s way through these sources makes me cringe because I know what kind of damage they can cause.
Town & Country Cleaning is an IICRC Certified Firm, with numerous employees carrying certifications as well. Bruce & Sarah Vance, the owners of Town & Country, are IICRC Instructors, who travel nationally to teach the House Cleaning Technician course. You could say that we aren’t simply better than the competition. We train them.
Personal Protective Equipment
The Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 and 2021 has upended our lives in many ways. One of the most important changes has been the amount of personal protective equipment required to be able to provide a service which protects the safety of our clients and staff. Much of this PPE has made its way into more areas of our lives, as grocery store employees, Walmart staff, waiters and waitresses, and many more are having to don masks, gloves; etc.
Because of the sharpened demand, supply of these essentials have risen dramatically. Nitrile Gloves, as an example, went from less than $4 a box in January of 2020 to nearly $40 a box as of February 2021. Town & Country Cleaning supplies all of our cleaning technicians with sufficient PPE to serve all of our clients. Many individual cleaners do not take such measures. Additionally, our staff are trained in how to handle cleaning after a COVID outbreak.
Staffing
Professional Cleaning Companies also need to pay their employees decent, living wages. The cleaners are professionals, and deserve to be paid as such. A living wage is no good if no one is able to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Professional companies will also offer paid vacation, sick days and so on. A professional cleaning company may also have office staff handling duties such as dispatching teams, scheduling cleans, handling customer service, payroll; etc.
There are other, important, overhead costs that a professional cleaning company has that an individual cleaner does not have. These expenses all are aimed at helping the clients. And, of course, a company needs to be profitable to survive. A company that can’t be profitable will not be around to help their clients for very long. Town & Country has been servicing clients in central North Carolina since 1991. We have weathered many storms, and we will continue to be there to create healthy living spaces for you.