How To Brief a New Cleaner on Your London Flat On Their First Visit

Sunshine on 29 October, 2025 | Comments Off on How To Brief a New Cleaner on Your London Flat On Their First Visit

The first visit sets the tone for everything after it, and most people brief a new cleaner badly, because they’ve never had to think about what a stranger needs to know to look after their home. They leave a note. They fire off a list by text the night before. Then they come home disappointed that the cleaner spent the slot on the wrong things. A good brief takes ten minutes at the door and saves you months of quiet frustration. Here’s what helps, from the side of the person holding the mop.

What’s the best way to show a new cleaner around your flat?

Walk them round it. On the first visit, before anything else, take ten minutes and go room to room with the cleaner, pointing things out as you go – this is the bathroom I care about, that’s the spare room you can skip. Showing beats telling every time, because half of what matters in a home only makes sense when you’re standing in front of it. A note that says “clean the kitchen” tells me nothing about the pan you soak that shouldn’t be moved, or the coffee machine you’d rather I left alone.

The walk-round does something else, too. It lets the cleaner ask. The good ones will stop you and ask questions as you go – what’s this surface, is that stain old or new – and those questions are worth more than any brief you could write down, because they’re the things a professional knows to check and you’d never have thought to mention.

One thing to do before they arrive, and one thing to leave well alone. Clear the clutter off the surfaces you want cleaned, because a cleaner can polish a bare worktop but can’t get under a fortnight of post and phone chargers, and shouldn’t be left deciding what’s rubbish and what’s your passport. What you don’t need to do is clean the place first. People do it out of embarrassment, scrubbing the bathroom the night before a stranger sees it, and all that achieves is hiding the real state of the flat and burning the slot you’re paying for. Let them see it as it is. That’s the point of them.

Why the laminated checklist is the least useful thing

People who’ve thought hard about handing over their home often arrive at a written list, sometimes a neatly typed one, and I understand the instinct. It’s the least useful thing you can give me on day one. A list flattens everything to the same weight, so “wipe the skirting boards” sits level with “the bathroom must be spotless,” and I’ve no way of knowing which one you’d be upset to find undone. Worse, a list read cold, with you already out of the door, turns a clean into a box-ticking exercise where I’m working to your paper instead of to your home. Keep the list if it helps you think. Just walk me round with it in your hand, rather than leaving it on the side and heading out.

How do you tell a cleaner what matters most to you?

Rank it. This is the one thing that separates a happy arrangement from a disappointed one, and almost nobody does it. Tell the cleaner, in plain order, what you care about most – if you only get to three things, it’s the bathroom, the kitchen floor and the beds – and you’ll come home to the flat you wanted rather than the flat the cleaner had to guess at. Someone working a fixed slot is always making choices about where the time goes. If they’re left to guess, they’ll spread it evenly, and even is rarely what you want; you want the shower gleaming and you don’t much mind about the top of the wardrobe.

Say the quiet part out loud, as well. If the state of the bathroom is the thing that decides whether you feel the money was well spent, tell me that on day one. We’re not mind readers – I once spent a careful hour on an oven for someone who barely used their kitchen and sat there quietly upset the whole time about a bathroom I’d given twenty minutes to. Nobody won that afternoon.

The two-hour slot that isn’t a deep clean

Set your expectations to match the time you’re buying. A weekly or fortnightly maintenance clean in a two- or three-hour slot keeps a flat on top of itself; it is not a deep clean, and it can’t be, because a proper deep clean of even a small London flat is most of a day on its own. Hand a cleaner a maintenance slot and expect the oven degreased and the windows done on top of the usual, and something has to give – and what gives is the everyday cleaning you hired them for. Book a one-off deep clean to reset the flat, then keep it up with the regular visits. Ask for both in a single slot and neither gets done properly.

Which quirks of your flat do you need to flag on day one?

The ones a stranger couldn’t guess. Every flat has them, and they’re the difference between a cleaner who looks after your place and one who innocently damages something. The reclaimed floor that marks the moment it gets wet. The blind that comes off its bracket if you tug the cord. The tap that drips unless you turn it just so. The sash that won’t lock again once it’s been opened. Tell me these before I start, because I’ll find them otherwise, and the finding might involve water on a floor that never wanted any.

I had a first visit to a garden-flat conversion in Kentish Town, a client who’d never had a cleaner before and had lovely oiled boards running right through, and the one thing she thought to mention was that the cat wasn’t to be let out the front. Fair enough, and I kept the cat in. What she didn’t mention was that those floors couldn’t take a normal wet mop, and I was two rooms in with a damp microfibre before I clocked the finish and stopped. No harm done that time. It’s exactly the thing a walk-round catches and a note never does.

The London access and entry things to explain

Getting in is its own briefing in a London flat. Tell the cleaner how the street door works, where the fob lives or which buzzer to press, whether the lift needs coaxing, and what to do with the keys when they leave. If you’re in a block, say whether they use the front entrance or whether that side gate is the way in. Spell out the alarm, if you have one, with the code and the order you have to do things in so it doesn’t trip. None of this is obvious from your doorstep, and a cleaner left guessing on the step is one starting late and flustered.

What should you sort out about products, keys and payment before they start?

The practical spine of the whole arrangement, and it’s worth five minutes up front to save a hundred small confusions later. Products first: decide whether you want the cleaner using yours or bringing their own, and if it’s yours, show them the cupboard and where things live. Flag anything you don’t want used – no bleach on the oiled wood, nothing scented if someone in the flat reacts to it. If there are pets or young children about, say what has to stay up out of reach.

Then the keys and the money, settled plainly. How does the cleaner get in on the days you’re out – a key, or a lockbox? How and when do you pay, and does the first visit work any differently? What happens if they turn up and can’t get in? Settle these on day one, and neither of you spends the next month trading awkward little texts about them.

The key question, and why you shouldn’t hover

Handing over a key to someone new is the part people find hardest, and I understand it completely – it’s your home. But if you don’t trust a person with a key, you shouldn’t be hiring them to be alone in your flat for two hours at all. The trust is the job. Brief them properly on the first visit, then let them get on with it; standing over a cleaner narrating what they should do next helps nobody, and the good ones don’t need watching – they need the walk-round and then the room to work. The first visit is where you decide whether this is someone you can leave to it. If the answer is no, that’s worth knowing early. If it’s yes, act like it from the second visit on.

How do you make the first visit set up a good second one?

Treat it as the start of something, not a test to be passed on the day. The first clean of a flat that’s gone a while without a regular cleaner is nearly always slower and heavier than the ones that follow – there’s a backlog to clear before anyone can settle into a rhythm, and judging the whole arrangement on that first, harder session isn’t fair to either of you. Give it two or three visits to find its level before you decide what you make of it.

What to say afterwards so the next visit is better

When something isn’t right, say so, kindly and specifically. The good ones would far rather hear that the shower wasn’t done to your liking than have you quietly decide they were no good and go looking elsewhere. “Could you give the taps a bit more attention next time” is a gift; a silent black mark and then a cancellation teaches nobody a thing. It runs both ways, too – a cleaner who tells you the oven really needs a one-off, or that two hours isn’t quite enough for the size of the place, is doing you a favour rather than making excuses. Most of the arrangements I’ve kept for years began with a ten-minute walk round a flat and someone honest enough to tell me, on the first day, exactly what they cared about.