Getting Somebody Else to Do Cleaning, “Kak kupit”, №1-2, 2008

You’re already sick and tired of the mess in your apartment, but you don’t have neither time nor wish to do the cleaning. That’s fine, you should do the pleasant things, and somebody else will do your apartment clean. But who else will?

You may hire a Cinderella, who will do from time to time. But you have a chance to get a group of magicians to do a cleaning for you. They are called a cleaning company.

The first time the word “cleaning” was heard in Ukraine in 1990th, when the native lexicon was actively filled with new loan-words. Then the first cleaning companies appeared on the territory of our country. What is cleaning and what kind of services do the cleaning companies?

Thank you, British!

The word “cleaning” has English origins. And it’s not a chance. About a century ago a couple of smart London businessmen realized, that they can make good money on the growing demand in cleanliness. They created a first company, which was occupied with cleaning and washing only. Soon the company created branches, then the competitors, and the name of the company – “cleaning” – was spread all over the world in English transcription.

Right now an annual turnover of European cleaning service is about 30 milliard Euros. The leaders of cleaning industry are Germany, France, Spain and Great Britain – in these countries the professional cleaner has already replaced housekeepers.

Ukrainian Cleaning

The native cleaning industry is still in the stage of formation – today only about 100 companies do the cleaning in Ukraine. However, the interest to the cleaning is always growing. It’s already proved that using of the special technologies while cleaning makes the floor coverings and upholstered furniture live 30% longer. According to the Shaden Group research, the correlation of customers, who order an office service, and customers, who order their own places service, is approximately equal. The periodicity of orders differs: the general cleaning of the house or apartment is done after the repair or before the holidays, the offices representatives order both general cleaning and everyday cleaning.

The modern professional cleaning is a whole industry with its own technologies, equipments and special household chemicals solutions, qualified staff. The professionals use special floor-washing machines, vacuum cleaners for dry and damp cleaning, technique for dry cleaning of carpets and upholstered furniture, special tools for windows and fa?ade washing. Except for this miracles, the cleaners also use the special detergents, which are sold to the cleaning companies only and you’ll never find them in the retail.

Fashionable Cleaning

The assortment of cleaning services is pretty wide. Depending on the jobs made, the cleaning companies are divided into universal, which do the whole list of all cleaning jobs, and specialized. For Ukrainian market, in spite of the widely-known “wide spectrum of services”, the specialized companies, which do one or two services, are more common. For some companies the main source of the profit is cleaning of premises, the others do the high-rise jobs or dry-cleaning of carpets.

According to the results of the editorial survey, the most popular and essential cleaning service is cleaning after construction. It’s really difficult to deal with the paint stains and plaster. The complex of these jobs includes: removing of repair rests (removing of paint stains, constructional dust, cleaning of surfaces), complex cleaning of premises. This kind of jobs is essential amongst the big trade and business centers, and also amongst the private customers.

The next popular services are the general cleaning, cleaning before and after holidays, dry cleaning of carpets.

The general cleaning includes the following kinds of jobs:

• Cleaning of firm floor coverings

• Dry cleaning of carpet coverings and upholstered furniture

• Cleaning and disinfecting of the bathroom

• Washing of walls and ceiling

• Washing of windows, glass surfaces, mirrors and interior elements

• Washing of doors and plinths

• Washing of kitchens and kitchen technique

• Polishing of the furniture

• Removing of trash

The cleaners are especially proud of the floor coverings service, which is done with using of special technique and chemicals: the floor coverings are protected with membranes, and the surface recovering service.

Professional Advice

How not to mistake when choosing the cleaning company? Iryna Kladko, the manager of commercial and marketing department of Shaden Group:

“While choosing the company, the main factors are its reputation, the quality and speed of service doing. Those factors may be checked experimentally, but you need the references of client for the first cooperation with cleaning company. You may see the way the company does cleaning just by your own eyes.

If the manager tells you a price and terms of doing the service immediately, you should forget the phone number of the company. Don’t even hesitate: you called to the non-professionals, and your place will be cleaned not by professionals, but by regular people with the chemicals, bought at the nearest market.

The professional cleaning company will never tell you the exact price without checking your place. After checking the condition of premises, its size and the volume of jobs, the cleaners will name the price.

“Any individual service has its individual price”, Iryna Kladko says, “The cleaning services depend on the cost of the jobs and on the complex of services ordered. Mostly the price is set for one square meter of the area. The price can vary for the premises with the area of 50, 100 and 200 square meters”.

“The bigger the premise is, the more expensive the interior is, the more profitable for a customer is cooperation with a cleaning company”, Daniil Maslov, the general manager of Kiev Cleaning Group, says.

Source: “Kak kupit”