Making The Most Of Home Cleaning Services

Two tips for those who need to use a hoarder cleaning service

If you are concerned about how your severe hoarding issues have affected your home's cleanliness levels and have, therefore, booked the services of someone who specialises in hoarder cleaning, some of the advice outlined here could help you.

Double the time and quantity of cleaning supplies you think you need

When the cleaner asks you how much time you think it will take them and their team to clean your home and the approximate amount of cleaning supplies you think they will need, you should double each of the initial figures you come up with. The reason for this is as follows; a hoarder's house is often full of surprises.

If you have had this problem for many years and your home is chock-full of your collections of homeware, clothing, books, paperwork and other things, then it will be impossible for you to accurately assess how unclean the house is (as you won't be able to see a lot of it, underneath the clutter). This, in turn, will mean that when you try to work out how much time the cleaner will need to sanitise it and how many litres of, for example, disinfectant and surfactant fluids they'll have to bring with them, your figures will probably not be accurate.

By booking the cleaner for twice as long as you think you'll need them and ordering twice as many cleaning supplies, you can ensure that the cleaner won't have to end the cleaning session before the whole house is sanitised and arrange to come back another time or find themselves running out of essential products, like bleach or mould spray, halfway through this task.

View this cleaning session as a chance to pare down your collection of hoarded goods

The idea of having anyone look at, let alone deep-clean, the property in which you have lots of hoarded items will probably induce a lot of anxiety. Rather than viewing this as a bad thing, however, you should embrace the fact that this might be an uncomfortable experience and take the opportunity to do something else that will also probably feel uncomfortable; that is, to pare down your collection of hoarded belongings.

You don't have to force yourself to throw out every last surplus item you own. However, getting rid of the items that are preventing the cleaner from sweeping the floor in the kitchen or dusting the shelves in the living room, will not only serve as a step in the right direction (in regards to recovering from your hoarding issues) but will also allow the cleaner to do as thorough a job of cleaning your home as they possibly can.