Domestic goddesses for hire cleaning up

Cinderella required. Must be able to buff granite tops to a high sheen and extricate nail varnish from a shagpile carpet. Plenty of work, good rates of pay.

It seems that, despite the current economic climate – or perhaps even because of it – the world of domestic cleaning is booming. Everyone suddenly needs a domestic goddess and is prepared to fork out good money.

Which begs the question: why? In times of austerity when we apparently have no money – and possibly plenty of time – it seems strangely at odds with our use of resources.

One of a growing number of people who now hire someone to do their housework, working mum Debra Cheetham, a 43-year-old IT manager who works from home in Telford, says: "Because I have got a two-year-old and because I work from home - there aren't enough hours in the day.

"I would just spend all my time cleaning rather than being with my family. It's a chore worth paying for."

It's a view that is driving a boom in the number of cleaning firms springing up. Mrs Mopp, one such business set up in Telford three years ago, is expanding into Shrewsbury. When it advertised a new cleaning post, 100 people applied.

The ailing jobs market, then, is another driving factor. People want to be cleaners. There are even NVQ courses in cleaning now, a popular one being held at Shrewsbury College where modules include the technicalities of cleaning washrooms, hard floors, soft floors and furnishings.

And such is Mrs Mopp's success that it is now looking to open franchises in other parts of the country.

Genette Buckley, manager of the Telford branch, says: "The way the economic climate is, people are working harder and for longer hours, and they don't want to work all weekend as well."

It's a good point. Weekend, and in particularly Sundays, were traditionally housework day, when the world stopped briefly and out came J-clothes and vacuum cleaners with smiley faces on them.

A generation ago the Sunday morning streetscape looked stereotypically like this: bloke cleaning car at number 10, another buffeting his windows at number 11; a mum taking a windowsill to task with a yellow duster at number 12, and on the drive you might talk to a man's feet poking out from under the chassis of a half-dismantled Ford Sierra.

The Sunday chores we used to do ourselves, however, we now appear happy to be paying other people to do.

And it's not just cleaning. To stretch Spot's legs, we hire a dog walker; instead of ironing our own shirts we take them to a lady, or man, who does it for us; rather than clean the car we take it to a man with sponge gloves on the back of a pub car park.

And what about traditional Sunday lunch? Who spends all day slaving on that when they can happily pay someone at a nearby pub to do it virtually as cheap?

But cleaning is the biggie. Household chores are a never-ending task, domestically on a par with painting the Forth Bridge, only with less reward.

"It's all things to make life easier and which give you time to do what you want to do," adds Genette.

"It is more acceptable to have a cleaner these days, it's not just for 'the big houses', we clean various houses in all different areas."

As two of her cleaners whirl like domestic dervishes around the house, Debra Cheetham continues to work away on her laptop, and clearly she has no problem with handing over some of the cash she will earn in this hour to her cleaning ladies.

The cleaners do the full top-to-bottom treatment, even lining up the shampoo bottles in the bathroom and the teddy bears in her son's room, before finally mopping themselves out of the front door and disappearing to their next job.

The place is left sparkling and Debra is delighted. It's like a full hotel service at home.

The working mum first had her eyes opened to the wonders of clicking her fingers (okay, and paying something like ten quid an hour) and having her home turned magically clean at a stage in her pregnancy when she could physically no longer do housework.

"And I've had a cleaner ever since," she says. "It means I can shut myself upstairs in my office and the girls come and do what's necessary.

"It is a chore worth paying for. Money might not be able to buy time, but it gives me time back."

Another growth area for the world of hired housework is men who don't know their Cillit Bang from their super-mops. Traditionally, men haven't viewed the practice of taking a feather duster to a skirting board with relish and in the last few years they have become keener on hiring a domestic cleaner to keep their homes spick-and-span.

A survey of the 1,800 new clients who have signed up in the past year at London's leading domestic cleaning service, Homeclean, found that 54 per cent were now men and 46 per cent women.

This is a dramatic turnaround on the situation three years ago when just 38 per cent of new clients were men and 62 per cent women.

One of the world's only exceptions to the rule is Gareth Williams, art curator at Weston Park, who refers housework as there being "something satisfying about keeping your house looking nice" and has a collection of vintage vacuum cleaners as proof.

Yes, most working people are enduring a period bordering on economic drudgery, but right now Cinderella is most definitely having a ball.