We Tried Out Sweepsouth... And This Is What we Found

Have you heard of Sweepsouth? If not, it is pretty much like Uber for domestic workers (or as they prefer to call them "professional cleaners"). You pay per hour for someone to come clean your house, when it suits you.

The process is quite simple. They have a group of carefully vetted ladies who have gone through criminal checks, test cleans etc and you book them as at your convenience. You log into their website, tick when you need someone to clean, specify how many rooms and it will give you an estimate of how many hours you need to book for. Then you punch in your address and your credit card details and poof, a magical cleaning genie appears at your doorstep at the time you requested. They even work weekends and for an added fee, you can even get them to bring their own cleaning products!

Here is our experience. We have a regular cleaning lady who comes in one day a week (as she only has one day free) but she is near retirement age so were keen to explore other options for when she retires or for when we have a bit of extra work and need someone on a different day of the week on an ad hoc basis. Sweepsouth were kind enough to sponsor us with an eight hour cleaning session- every mom's dream!

Laureen was friendly, needed very little supervision and was very thorough in her cleaning. A once-off proper clean was exactly what my home needed and we definitely got that! The recommended time allocation for cleaning my house and having ironing done was eight hours (they give you an estimate based on the size of your house), so that is what I booked. The allocated eight hours was enough for her to get through all the cleaning but not all the ironing. However, bearing in mind it is school holidays and with two busy little ones causing havoc, my house was a bit of a tsunami, so the fact that a little bit of ironing was left behind  is understandable. The clothing Laureen did manage to iron were ironed properly with no burn marks or shiny marks left behind (my personal pet peeve). 

Laureen had a fascinating story. She is from Zimbabwe and is re-doing her matric in order to improve her marks in the hopes of going on to study physiotherapy. Sweepsouth's flexible hours allows her the flexibility to complete her studies while supporting herself and her eight year old son.

The verdict? Yes, I would use them again. If you need someone on a permanent basis, more than once or twice a week, a regular domestic worker would probably be a better bet as it will probably be cheaper and you can train someone to do things exactly the way you like it. However, if you just need someone occasionally and don't want to be stuck with the drama of dealing with all the labour law issues and other complications that come along with having a regular domestic worker, this is a great option and you can request to have the same person come back if they are available. In my opinion, that's a pretty good deal!