The house is a mess. You can’t remember the last time you dusted. You’ve got so much chores to do. What’s worse, every mothers you know seems to have no problem keeping a clean and tidy home. Are you the only one who is struggling with household chores?
Don’t believe it for a second. Almost every mother out there feels the same way. So how do we get it all done? We don’t. We either hire help or sacrifice precious free time to clean or close one eye and ignore the mess.
While it is relatively easy to get a live-in helper in Singapore, many families prefer the privacy and less committal option of hiring a part-time helper instead.
Part time cleaner
I recently used Helpling – an online platform which connects customer with independent cleaners – when my live-in helper took a few days off to show her family around Singapore.
Started in Berlin in 2014, Helpling has grown and is now available in over 150 cities. For a flat rate of SGD18* per hour, an insured and skilled Helpling cleaner arrived at my doorstep at a designated time and cleaned my house, while I relaxed and spent time with the children.
How it works
Booking a cleaner via Helpling website couldn’t be easier. But for your sake, I added some screenshots and show you step by step how the booking service works. I’m thoughtful like that, I know.
Step 1: Click ‘Book a Cleaning’ and choose total hours and/or additional task you need help with. I love the price and time estimator on the right of the page because it gives me a great control over my budget and time allocated for the cleaning to take place.
Step 2: Enter your address or where you like the cleaning to take place. You can also login and save this particulars for future use, so you don’t have to fill these fields in every single time you make a booking.
Step 3: Choose the date and time, and leave instructions for the cleaner to get into your house.
4. Enter your payment details and you are done.
As confirmation, you will receive an email detailing the name of the cleaner who will be cleaning your house, along with the date and time. You may also cancel the service 24 hours before scheduled time, free of charge.
How was the service?
On the scheduled day, about an hour before the scheduled time, I received a call from Helpling asking me whether I mind if Josef, the cleaner arriving half an hour later. The call operator explained that the cleaner had back to back booking on the day and would like a bit of time in between to have his meal. How could I say no to that?
Josef arrived right on the new scheduled time. He was very polite. He brought his own gloves and a few cleaning tools. As I don’t use harsh detergent for cleaning purposes in our household, I explained to him how to clean with vinegar. He understood immediately and got on to work.
He was very meticulous. After he washed my dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, the entire area was wiped dry. He cleaned the windows without leaving traces of water mark, wiped every exterior surfaces in my house, including the kitchen cabinets, washing machine, the top of my refrigerator (which my own helper often overlook), countertops, book shelfs, desks and the toilet basins. Even the window tracks were cleaned.
He did my ironing too! Mind you, ironing is not part of the standard cleaning package but it can be easily added when you make the booking on Helpling. I’m a bit of clean crisp shirt nazi. I love ironing but it takes me forever to iron a shirt because I’m very particular on getting every nook of the shirt ironed well. Ahem.. I know how to iron a shirt properly, the Martha Steward way. 😉
I can tell Josef is trained in ironing. He knows exactly the right steps and you can see in the photo below, he did well.
The Big Questions
When I told my friends about the service, most are concerned about letting a stranger into the house and the quality of work. Fair enough. I asked a representative from Helpling regarding those concerns and this is their reply:
We have a thorough selection process for every new cleaner including an interview with our operations team and an aptitude test to check their knowledge of home cleaning is up to our high standards. We also ask cleaners to provide documents to prove they can work legally in SG, and we carry out our own background check as well. By being so thorough at the cleaner selection stage we are able to ensure our registered cleaners are of a high standard.
To ensure standards are continuously high, we ask all our customers to provide feedback on the standard of service they received. This allows us to identify any areas our cleaners need to improve on, and help them get better.
Our thorough selection process hopefully goes someway to dealing with questions of trust and security. The fact that we background check every cleaner shows we are serious about providing a service our customers can trust. In the (very unlikely!) event that something goes wrong, every cleaning session is backed with a $1 million liability insurance policy, to give our customers peace of mind.
I can’t tell you what to think but the above sounds pretty good to me. I believe we shouldn’t let doubts and fear prevent us from using a service that clearly helps improve the quality of our lives. Think about all those hours you can safe from not having to clean, to do the things you love to do.
For more information and to book a part-time cleaner, go
here. I highly recommend it.
Tell me, have you booked a cleaner via Helpling? I would love to hear your thoughts. Also, please share if you think there are any other cleaning services I should know about.
Disclaimer: This post was written in collaboration with Helpling.
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Good share, thanks! Gonna try it next time. I also wanna share my experience for using part time cleaner from Kaodim Singapore, they sent me few quotes from different cleaning providers, I get to choose which one to hire. I have used this site for few times on my weekend when I am too busy with my own work. Just sharing! Hope you dont mind 🙂