The Elevated Standard

Consistency is the hard part. Anyone can clean a house well once; the difficulty is cleaning it to the same standard on the hundredth visit, through holidays, illness and staff turnover, in a house whose owner should never have to explain anything twice.

We walk the house before we quote it

Nothing is priced from a floor plan, a room count or a phone call. We visit, with you or your property manager, and go through every room, including the ones you would not think to show us, because the cupboard nobody opens is where the work actually is.

On that visit we identify surfaces. What the worktops are, whether the floor is sealed, which stone is in which bathroom, what the curtains are lined with, whether the brass is lacquered. A surprising proportion of the damage we are called in to correct was done by someone who assumed a limestone floor was porcelain, or treated a lacquered finish as solid metal.

The survey takes about an hour and costs nothing.

The specification

The survey produces a written document, room by room. It records what is cleaned on every visit, what is on rotation and at what interval, what is dusted rather than cleaned, and what is not to be touched at all.

That last category is the one clients value most and the one nobody asks about. The painting that is never dusted. The desk that is never tidied. The shelf of books that is left exactly as it is. A specification that records these removes the need for anyone to remember them.

It also records preferences that have nothing to do with cleaning: which door we use, where shoes come off, how the beds are presented, which room the dog is not allowed into. These belong to your household rather than to your housekeeper, so when a deputy covers, the standard covers with them.

You approve the specification before we begin, and we review it with you twice a year.

Matched, not sent

We do not send whoever is available. Matching accounts for the property (a five-storey period house and a lateral apartment with integrated systems want different experience) along with the hours you need, whether the house is occupied during visits, and any languages spoken in the household.

You meet your housekeeper before they begin, and you may decline. Nobody is offended; a match that does not feel right at the introduction will not improve over a year.

A named deputy is appointed at the same time, and this is the part most arrangements get wrong. A deputy who first sees your house on the morning your housekeeper is ill is a stranger with a key and a guess. Ours works alongside your housekeeper at least once, to the same specification, before they ever cover alone.

How the standard is held

Your housekeeper is visited by a supervisor on a schedule, not only when something has gone wrong. The supervisor works to the same specification you approved and checks against it rather than against an impression.

You have a single named contact for the arrangement, who is not your housekeeper. That separation matters: nobody should have to raise a concern about a person's work with that person, and most households simply will not. Having somewhere else to take it is what stops a small dissatisfaction becoming a resignation six months later.

Twice a year we review the specification with you formally. Houses change (a renovation, a new floor, a child, a dog, a wing closed for the winter) and a specification written two years ago quietly stops describing the house it was written for.

When something goes wrong

Something will, eventually. A glass gets broken, a finish reacts badly, a visit is missed. What matters is what happens next, and you should know the answer before you need it rather than after.

Breakages are reported by us, the same day, before you find them. Our housekeepers are told explicitly that reporting a breakage carries no consequence and concealing one ends their employment. That rule is the single most important thing we do, because a housekeeper who is frightened of you is a housekeeper who hides things.

We carry public liability insurance and will provide the certificate without being asked. Where an item is irreplaceable, insurance is not really the answer and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.

If a visit is missed, you hear it from us first. Traffic, illness and closed roads happen; silence is a choice.

If the standard slips, tell your named contact rather than your housekeeper. That is what the contact is for, and it is a faster route to a fix than politeness is.

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