Domestic Cleaning in Selly Oak

Night shifts, stairs and flats with no stairs at all

What shapes a home clean here is the household more than the building. Some Selly Oak homes have somebody in them at an odd hour, such as a hospital worker sleeping off a night shift at the Queen Elizabeth. So the visit is planned as a route through the house, and the order matters as much as the contents. The properties themselves split two ways. The older houses have a hall, a full flight of stairs and a rear extension, and the stairs absorb a real share of every visit before a room is touched. The flats near Battery Retail Park have no stairs at all, so the whole job is the kitchen, the shower room, the hard floor and the glazed doors, and the visit is correspondingly short. There is a third group worth naming: households living immediately alongside the shared houses, on streets where half the properties are let by the room, who want their own home held to a standard that has nothing to do with what is happening next door.

• Households where somebody sleeps in the day after a night shift, so the visit runs as an agreed route, not a room list
• Family houses off Raddlebarn Road and towards Bournbrook, where the hall and staircase carry the entire household
• Flats around Battery Retail Park with no stairs, where the kitchen, shower room, hard floor and glazed doors are the whole job
• Landlords letting a single B29 property to a family or a professional couple, who build a fortnightly visit into the tenancy
• Households out during the day, who give us a key or code so they need not be in
• Owner occupiers on streets that are half student let, wanting their own house held regardless of the road around it

A written route through the house while somebody sleeps

The first visit begins with a walk round and a written scope, room by room, including anything to leave alone. After that it is the same weekday, roughly the same hour and the same written scope every visit. Where somebody is sleeping off a night shift we agree the order in advance: kitchen and ground floor first, vacuuming held back until a stated hour, and one door that stays shut. We bring our own products and equipment, or work with yours where someone in the house reacts badly to a particular cleaner or where there is a baby in the house. The property is locked up behind us and a message goes out when we leave, noting anything you should know about.

• A written room by room scope agreed before the first visit, covering what stays shut and what stays dry
• An agreed order of rooms where a night shift is being slept off, with vacuuming held to a set hour
• If you give us a key or code, you need not be in, which suits a B29 home that is empty or quiet in the middle of the day
• Your own products used in place of ours where somebody in the house reacts to a particular cleaner
• A message after each visit noting anything worth knowing, not simply that we have been

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: our domestic cleaning method.

Where regular cleaning sits in B29

The homes we clean regularly here sit mostly away from the busiest terraces: the streets running down towards Selly Oak Park, the semis towards Bournbrook, and the flats on the Battery Retail Park side. Parking is the practical difference between one street and the next. On the tight terraces around Tiverton Road, Heeley Road and Dawlish Road a mid morning slot works better than one landing in the school run or the hospital changeover, and on the newer flats we need a fob or a gate code as well as a door key. The one seasonal effect worth knowing is that late June to early September is when the changeover work peaks in B29, so if you want to move your slot, that is the period to give us most notice on.

Room count, pets and ironing in a Selly Oak visit

A regular visit is priced per visit on how long the property really takes, and that figure is then held so you can budget around it. Three things move it in Selly Oak. Room count, because a house with a through hall, two receptions, a rear extension and three bedrooms over takes longer than a flat of similar floor area. Pets, because a dog walked in Selly Oak Park in February leaves grit and hair in a stair carpet that has to be worked over twice. And laundry or ironing, quoted as extra time so it never comes quietly off the bathroom. The first visit is longer than the ones after it and is quoted separately, since setting a standard always takes more time than holding one.

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Weekly for shift households, fortnightly for most B29 houses

Fortnightly suits most family houses here, and weekly suits households with children, pets or shift patterns, where a fortnight is simply too long a gap on the kitchen and the bathroom. Monthly works if you keep the day to day going yourself and want the heavy rooms done properly. If a house has been let go for a long time, a regular visit will not quietly catch up: a deep clean first, then a regular slot to hold it, works out better than paying for an overrunning visit every fortnight and still feeling behind. Nothing is on a minimum term, so moving between weekly, fortnightly and monthly as the household changes is straightforward.