Everyone likes to start with a clean slate, like new mum Sreelekshmi Rajesh. She didn’t need to think twice before calling up a professional housecleaning service to spruce up her house before she brought her newborn home from the hospital. “There was a mountain of work to be done. Neat and Tidy, one of the several professional cleaning firms in the city, cleaned the house in a day and we came home to spotless floors, clean furniture and cobweb-free corners,” says the assistant engineer with Kerala State Electricity Board.
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Like Sreelekshmi, many residents of the city are calling in the professionals to keep their homes neat and tidy.
Most of them, particularly young couples, lead busy lives and just want to give their houses a good scrubbing once in a while.
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“Nowadays it’s hard to find maids. Moreover, my house, at 3,500 sq ft, is much too big for one person to clean and I was not very satisfied with how some of the maids who worked for me cleaned it. That is why I decided to try out professional housecleaning services,” says Chandrika P. Nair, a dentist.
She engaged Perfect Cleaners, another housecleaning firm, to do the job. Professional housecleaning is also coming in handy for those who are shifting houses. Sindhu Chendur Pandian, a software engineer in Technopark, recently shifted homes and she wanted to get her old one ready for new tenants.
“Although we used to clean it regularly, I always felt like there was a lot of corners we missed. Also, having spent some time abroad, I had first-hand experience of what professionals house cleaners are capable of,” explains Sindhu, who also called in Perfect Cleaners to make it immaculate.
Hari Prasad, who runs Vital Hospitality, one of the oldest housekeeping firms in the city, says most of his clients are NRIs with homes in the city. “Many of the houses are empty and require periodic cleaning, which they leave to us.”
Housekeeping packages are based on the requirement of individual clients and many such services charge per square feet depending on the size of the homes and amount of work to be done. It can mean anything upwards of ₹ 1 per square feet to be cleaned. Basic housekeeping services usually means dusting and mopping. More intensive programmes, which cover the entire house, including bathrooms, ceilings and walls, tend to cost more.
The time required usually depends on the size of the house and how dusty it is. The cleaning starts with dusting, vacuuming and de-cobwebbing, before mopping, pressure washing or steam cleaning of floors.
“It usually takes a whole day to clean a moderately-sized house or a large apartment. Except for cleaning bathrooms, we don’t use synthetic, highly corrosive cleansing agents. Water and steam are more than enough to remove most stains. We are very careful as we don’t want to risk damaging the furniture or furnishings,” says Tijo Thomas, a partner at Perfect Cleaners. Some firms also clean water tanks and shampoo the upholstery as well.
The home owners seem to be pleased with the services. Chandrika says: “I think steam cleaning and using natural cleaning products helped as the flooring in my house is wood.” Sreelekshmi says that she is impressed by how her service provider cleaned the false ceiling and cupboards in her house. “They even took away the curtains and returned them cleaned. These guys do a much better job than what my maid or I myself have been doing and at a reasonable rate too. Plus, it saves a lot of time” she adds. Sindhu says that the biggest advantage of using cleaning professionals is that “they somehow know all the hidden corners where dust and dirt accumulates, which makes a lot of difference when it comes to cleaning.”
Most of the cleaners even offer periodic cleaning contracts, again depending on individual client requirements.
Even though the city doesn’t have a huge domestic housekeeping market, the entrepreneurs say that it is getting bigger and bigger. “In the last few years, the number of IT couples who require our services have also gone up. So, we are slowly shifting our focus from corporate clients to domestic clients,” says Hari Prasad.