House cleaning at end of sit - your thoughts?

Sitter Questions, Advice & Chat
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I’m curious about people’s thoughts and experiences on cleaning the owners’ house at the end of your sit.

I’ve been doing sits for several years, both through this site and referrals from friends and family. (I do all sits for free.) I really enjoy it and all the homeowners so far have been lovely.

I have learned to discuss expectations around house cleaning when I talk to owners before committing to a sit. We always agree on a “leave it as you found it” standard, which I think is entirely reasonable.

However, in practice, what happens is that I not only clean up whatever impact I had on the house, and whatever the pets did while I was there (even normal shedding fur all over), but I also clean the kitchen and bathroom like I would at home after the same length of time (so, like a regular house cleaning).

I always get complimented on my cleaning in my sitter reviews. But it’s the one part of sitting I dislike. I end up spending several hours at the end of every sit on this, even though I don’t make a mess as I go along. Being older, my spouse and I now actually pay someone to thoroughly clean our house once a month and then we tidy in-between. So I do more vigorous house cleaning on a sit than I do at home!

Part of me feels that since the homeowner is getting a live-in sitter for free instead of paying $30-50 a day just for someone to pop in to feed the pets, or more if they hire a live-in sitter, that asking for house cleaning is a bit much. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to come home from vacation and deal with someone else’s effect on my house, even if they weren’t that messy. It’s just icky. That’s why I think this is a complicated thing.

Out of nearly 2 dozen sits, only twice has an owner offered to provide housecleaning. In one case, their regular cleaners came right after my sit. In the other, I was asked to pay their regular house cleaners since I’d been the one living there for a month, even though much of the cleaners’ time was spent just vacuuming up the fur from multiple pets. I’d kept the kitchen and bathroom and rest of house clean. (Note: I didn’t find out I was expected to pay them until right before the cleaners arrived. That’s when I learned to talk about this BEFORE the sit!)

I’m wondering what experiences other sitters have had and their thoughts and feelings about the cleaning issue? TIA for any replies.

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My husband and I have a similar dilemma.
He is very clean, obsessive, so he has often left places cleaner than we found.
However he also has profound anxiety about cleaning correctly- worrying about a product that might leave a stain, scratches… so much so that he definitely prefers having cleaners that the homeowner uses.
We’ve never made it a condition of our sit, but if a homeowner has a cleaner, he offers to pay for them prior to our departure, so that things are left as the owner is used to.
The funny thing is, he’s often disappointed in the cleaners anyway ! :slight_smile:
In the end, the few times we offered this, the owners ended up paying anyway.
My happiest sits are the ones when it’s announced that the cleaners will come on my last day.

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I suspect we’re very similar to you, in that we spend much of the day before leaving a sit doing cleaning and getting organised for a move, even though we’ve kept tidy and clean throughout our time there. It usually results in a few choice words between my OH and myself, since he thinks I do too much and that we should basically leave the place as we found it, not cleaner.

Yes, it’s tiring and time-consuming, but we don’t clean the entire house, just go over the areas we’ve used, and it seems courteous to do that. On a few occasions, where there’s a regular cleaner, we’ve been told not to bother with any final day cleaning and that’s a real treat.

We wouldn’t pay for a regular cleaner though, that’s the host’s responsibility and choice.

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Yes, that’s always a real bonus :+1:

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I’m happy to hear that I’m not the only sitter who’s struggling with this!

I think one of the issues is that on all my sits but two, the homeowners did all their own cleaning. So it’s not a matter of when they schedule or who pays for their regular housecleaners. It’s the owners or me. And I can see why they don’t want to clean up after me! So it’s very tricky.

Most people I’ve sat for have very clean homes, which is great, except I have to meet that standard when I leave. If they’re not very clean, I relax my own cleaning routine, but it’s not as pleasant to stay there!

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I’m glad you brought this up!

First of all, I find it shocking that you were expected to pay for cleaning on someone else’s house. In what universe does that make sense?! Yes, you benefited from a clean environment, but it’s their house! The audacity of some people never fails to shock me!

Secondly, I do appreciate your dilemma. I enjoy cleaning but it comes to the end of a sit and I almost resent having to do it, while also putting pressure on myself to make the place spotless. I have even done this for sits where I arrived to a filthy house. In fact, in one, I spent the first couple of days cleaning the place to a level I felt was acceptable to invite a guest into. There were potatoes growing arms in the cupboard! However, if I hadn’t gone to those lengths, I would be concerned I’d be left a poor review, so it’s difficult to know where the line is.

In my current sit, I am looking after two of the most demanding and destructive dogs I have ever encountered! Therefore, I have already reasoned that, while I intend to spend time cleaning, it is going to be very difficult to get the place spotless for the owner’s return. Ultimately, there needs to be a balance. We are not providing a cleaning service, we are there to look after animals and property, and so I think leaving a place clean but not to the extent you could eat off the floor, is probably reasonable!

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I confess that my cleaning is not very rigorous (but better than at my own place). I get the five stars in the cleaning category anyway, and mentions of “clean and tidy” in the text of the review.

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If I understand your post correctly, you are feeling taken advantage of for cleaning above and beyond the expectation that is mutually agreed upon (“leave it as you found it”)? Or is it just a general vent that cleaning at the end of a stay is a pain?

I don’t want to come home to a complete mess, but also I don’t need (or want) a sitter to mop the floors or do any hard scrubbing. Just empty the cat box, take out the trash, do your dishes, and clean up your own spills.

I do understand, a bit. When I travel, I often stay in peoples’ homes, and I always leave them extremely clean - and that’s when I’m paying to be there! My account is filled with reviews commenting on how clean I leave places. But it has to do with my standards and what feels like the right thing for me to do.

The owners who sprung it on you to pay their cleaners were way out of line BTW.

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I have a very high standard of cleanliness and most of the homes I stay in are very clean on my arrival as that is something I study carefully in pictures and look for in previous reviews. The times I have stayed in places that weren’t as clean I was aware of this going in and was fine with it.

Many hosts have cleaners come while we are there and in these cases, we often don’t have to do too much if they were last there in the last couple of days before we depart.

Generally speaking, because of my high standards, I clean very thoroughly before we leave, and we have gotten lots of positive feedback on our cleanliness.

Even very clean houses can have that extra sparkle to them the day they were thoroughly cleaned-as anyone who has had a cleaner has experienced especially-- and that the way I think most houses look when we leave.

While I certainly usually don’t need to clean as much as I do, I don’t mind it, and I take pride in leaving the home in such a good state. I figure a few hours of work that could lead me to a glowing review can’t hurt. I realize that cleaning to the degree I do really isn’t necessary for positive feedback-especially if it was a shorter sit and I cleaned things that definitely would have been fine left untouched-- but again, I just do it because I kind of like to do it.

You mentioned in your post that you discuss cleaning standards beforehand and that is usually ‘leave it how you found it,’ but then you choose to take on deeper cleaning. So it doesn’t sound like you are encountering hosts who are expecting you to do this, but you feel compelled to do this since you would clean your own home the same way. So I am not quite sure what the problem is? And if the extra cleaning is necessary to return the house to the state you found it in, then I think sitters should be okay with doing that.

If you think you are leaving the house as you found it, as agreed upon, then don’t feel the need to do any more. But if you feel uneasy about that for some reason, and choose to go beyond, leaving you feeling better about how the host may perceive the state of the home–even though you don’t like doing it–then it is important to realize that is a choice you are making and you won’t feel as ‘put out’ about it.

Sure, sometimes the cleaning up part can be a bit of a drudge, but like I said before, I like doing it so I don’t find it a huge problem, and I never feel any sort of pressure about it.

Between not minding cleaning, and feeling pretty confident in my abilities to leave a house in good condition, this isn’t something I personally feel the need to discuss with hosts beforehand. But for some people, especially if they have had bad experiences with prior hosts in this arena, it is probably a good thing to talk about so everyone is on the same page expectations-wise.

I have been sitting for 10 years and I have never encountered a host who made me feel like they were expecting me to be some sort of maid for them, or exerted any sort of pressure on us over making sure the home was cared for in any particular way. And this is true even of some hosts who clearly had extremely high standards of cleanliness.

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It’s a funny one. I certainly wouldn’t expect anyone to clean up after me, and I often find myself cleaning at the end of a house-sit with far more care than I do my own home. There’ve been a couple of sits where I’ve felt the need to hoover and mop the floor (because it was covered it dust and dog hair and felt horrible on bare feet) and clean the hob at the start of the sit, just so that I can start off in a good place. I think I probably left those places cleaner than I found them. But generally my willingness to go the extra mile is very much dependent on whether it feels as though the home owners have made the effort to provide a clean and pleasant environment to start off with. It’s not about the actual facilities on offer – I’ve been welcomed into homes with an earth floor and an open fire for cooking (non THS) where it’s clear that hosts have made a real effort to make their home as welcoming as they possibly can. It’s that hospitality that shines through and makes me want to repay their hard work.

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We go above and beyond… but we don’t like doing it. We actually start cleaning a few days before we leave a place, just to reduce the amount we need to do on the final day. Quite often we’ll clean areas that were clean enough when we arrived… just not perfectly clean, just incase an owner thinks it’s us that made the mess, without realising it is their own mess. You know those areas like the odd drips on the front of kitchen cupboard doors, or the toaster pull-out parts. None of which we would ever mark an owner down for as long as the rest of a place was clean… but I panic incase an HO marks us down for those little random tasks when we’ve got perfect 5*'s from everyone.

I feel sad for the pets, they always know something is up when cleaning goes on for longer than usual… when we’re supposed to be keeping them happy.

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I usually sit alone and I clean as I go so there’s very little to do on the last day, other than strip the beds, quick hoover round and empty the bins.
I really don’t understand the need to spend several hours on the last day cleaning.

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We’re homeowners and sitters. And we agree that the cleaning thing is a bit of an issue. How much cleaning do we do as sitters and how much do we ask of our sitters?

We have never sat in a home where a cleaning person came. So we cleaned up after ourselves. And in our own home, we do all our own cleaning prior to the sitters’ arrivals (whom are our guests).

@NETime You write: [quote=“NETime, post:1, topic:55527”]
I end up spending several hours at the end of every sit on this, even though I don’t make a mess as I go along.
[/quote]

Boy, do we agree with that statement.

We’ve been on the THS for three years now. And our cleaning requests of sitters have become more relaxed.

However, we do ask sitters to clean up after themselves. This includes cleaning the kitchen and the bathrooms they use. Not a deep cleaning, heavens no, not mopping floors, and certainly no dusting! But yes to cleaning the, well, you know, gross stuff: hair, splatters on toilets, fingerprints on appliances, spills, etc. We once had a sitter here for six weeks who did nothing to clean and upon our arrival home we were horrified at the neglect. Thankfully, that was only one instance early in our journey on THS.

And yes, when we are sitters, I do not look forward to the inevitable cleaning at the end of the sit. We do briefly mention cleaning during the video chat, and stress the “we clean the areas we use” angle. How much is too much or too little, though? We do not do deep cleaning, that’s for sure. But we do leave the areas that we used as we found them, and sometimes better, like the one time we found the stove splattered with grease from cooking meat. Of course we had to clean THAT!! LOL!! :joy:

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Absolutely agree!

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I live clean and want clean and uncluttered sit homes. I don’t have a problem returning them as I found them.

If a cleaning service were available for hire — like one the hosts used regularly — I’d consider hiring them if I preferred to spend my time not cleaning before I handed the home back to them.

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I HAAAAAAAAAAATE cleaning. It’s, by far, my least favorite part of the sit. lol. Because I hate it, it takes hours spread over days. More than once I’ve considered just hiring a service and paying for it vs burning my own time to do it. On my upcoming sit they have a cleaner that comes twice a month. I think I’ll talk to them about having them come the day before/day they return (depending on arrival time) and let the cleaner polish it up.

I do clean as I go so there is never really a big mess. But as with the others I feel the need to go above and beyond and I can be a bit OCD about what I’m handing off. I also, when I’m in a bigger house, limit the rooms I go into. Like in my upcoming sit they have a whole 3rd floor that, aside from a weekly check to make sure nothing bad is happening, I’ll never enter. I’ve also suggested this is where they should put any personal items they don’t want me to use, just in case there is an accident. I will not clean this room. And once they leave I’ll close their bedroom door and I won’t clean that room either.

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I’m a bit of a clean freak so always leave the home spotless when I leave a sit and have received many comments regarding that in my reviews. Been lucky though that have never really done sits in homes that weren’t clean when I arrived. I’ve read reviews where homeowners state “our home was left cleaner upon our return”. One thing I do not do is that - I don’t overclean as I don’t want to embarrass a homeowner, I wouldn’t go as far as cleaning a dirty oven that had never been cleaned. The most bothersome chore I find at the end of a house sit is washing the bedding. Have done sits where the dryers took an age and the sheets were very heavy cotton and took so long to dry. One thing I do on short sits is bring my own bedding. I ask the homeowners to just leave the bed stripped and I put on my own bedding and take it home to wash - save so much time.

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Of course the level of cleaning can depend on lenght of stay. Are one staying a weekend or a week or 6 months. I usually have sits up to a week. For that timeframe I wipe over bath and kitchen and use the vacum, Maybe a quick mopping of floors. I do not dust the whole house, wash windows, fridge, oven (unless I’ve spilt something).

For many sits the majority of cleaning-needs come from the pets. In principle, in my opinion that is beyond my responsibility. My responsibility is to take care of the pets and tidy up after myself. I see profiles where one require daily vacuuming (not robot-vac…:wink: ) or even daily cleaning of bath and kitchen where one would think the pets weren’t that much. That is not something I apply for and I think it is a big ask. Do they really do that themselves, I think sometimes. When one add up the timeconsumption on the tasks they mention on walking, grooming, playing «actively» with cats and cleaning - is it a full time job for them?

That doesn’t mean that I don’t do clean up after pets. But apart from accidents of vomit/poo/pee and similar which I regard within petsitting - a sitter cleaning after Pets is in general a gift beyond already.

I usually take the initiative regarding cleaning. I don’t so much ask what the host want, I suggest something that works for me. I state what I plan to do on departure and ask them what they think. Doing it like that they never ask for more.

One can do it before sit. For instance when communicating on travel plans: «As I leave at 8 in the morning it isn’t enough time to get the sheets washed. I will take off the bed linen. Would you like me to put it in the hamper or in the machine and start it?»

I usually do the majority of cleaning the day before. I always report to HO and give them opportunity to feedback early in the day, with time enough to a little extra if needed. For instance:

«I’ve wiped the bath and kitchen, vacuumed and given the floors a quick mopping. Before I leave tomorrow I will take out the waste and strip the beds. Kitty will have his kibble and his toilet checked before I leave. Let me know if you think I forgot something». They have never added any dusting, fridgewashing or whatever. Should they ask for minor things I will do it. The bigger ones it will be easy to say we didn’t agree to that. If they want clean linen put on, I will offer to put on clean if they have extra in the closet. I usually leave early due to travel and washing/ drying what I’ve used would mean I would get up in the middle of the night just for the sake of linen. Which I won’t.

I do get «it was cleaner than we left it» even at that level. I think partly because I communicate in this way and give them insight in what I’ve actually done and the possibility to input. But i do not ask «what more would you like me to do».

It is a nice thing to do for others to want to make them happy having a cleaner home than they left it. The downside could be, perhaps especially hosts that regard sitting as a provided service from THS and not equal partners, or don’t have sufficient knowledge of the terms or similar, will regard a deep clean and/ or spotless house as the standard of service, and that «leave house as you found it» to be an inferior service that is not «good enough» . So that they expect «housekeeping» and not «housesitting». In the longer run that could be more of a burden for sitters as the expectations of «a standard sit» will change/ rise?

I didn’t sign up for cleaning. I have been a cleaner in younger years, it is an important task and should be paid (generously). I certainly do not pay a fee to be able to clean.
:blush:

That’s how I see it.

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I always do any needed cleaning at the beginning of my sits so I can enjoy the space clean, rather than just doing it for the host. It’s easy for me to maintain along the way, and makes the end of sit much easier to complete.

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I clean kitchen worktops and sink, sweep kitchen floor and occasionally mop if visibly dirty. Hoover living room, hall and stairs. Clean loo, sink and wipe round bath/shower in bathroom. Fluffy up sofa cushions. Empty bins. Done in 30-40 minutes just before I leave. Always get 5 stars and positive comments on how clean and tidy it is.

Anything that was grubby when I arrived stays that way. I’m not a cleaning service.

I don’t understand why/how people spend hours cleaning?

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