Monster Cleaning Bexleyheath is a small cleaning firm working in houses and flats across DA6, DA7 and DA16. Most of our week goes on regular cleaning, then tenancy cleans, with carpets, ovens and deep cleans fitted in between. A tenancy clean starts at £156 and a regular cleaner costs £23 an hour. We stick to one town and its surroundings, and we like it that way.
Houses we know well
Bexleyheath grew fast in the 1920s and 30s once the railway came, and the heath disappeared under streets of three bed semis, some pebbledashed and some with mock-Tudor gables, plus bungalows near the station. The DA6 roads towards Danson Park have larger plots and longer gardens, and there is newer flat building around the town centre and the former Woolwich Polytechnic site. Because so many houses share a layout, we can often picture a DA7 semi before we have seen it. A price given on the phone usually holds.
Older streets on the round
Some streets take more reading. South of the town, Old Bexley is a conservation-area village on the Cray. North and down the hill, Erith has riverside housing that was already old when the heath was built over. We look before we quote in both.
How our week is shaped
More than a fifth of the borough’s residents are 65 or over, and that shapes our diary more than anything else does. A typical booking is the same weekday at the same time, in a house somebody has lived in since the 1970s, and either a key safe on the wall or a spare key in our cabinet. Weekends are quiet, which is the reverse of inner London. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings go first, and people keep them for years.
Getting to work without a tube
No Underground line reaches the borough. Bexleyheath station has Southeastern trains to Charing Cross, Cannon Street, London Bridge and Victoria in around forty minutes, and the town centre is one of south-east London’s busiest bus interchanges, with routes out to Woolwich, Eltham, Sidcup, Erith and Dartford. Our cleaners who do not drive use those. So if you want an 8am start on a road the buses miss, we will tell you honestly whether we can manage it.
Drives, garages and boxes
Almost every house has a drive or a dropped kerb, so the van parks outside and nobody has to hunt for a bay. Garages, utility rooms and under-stairs cupboards here tend to be full, so if boxes need moving before a deep clean, tell us upfront and the time goes into the booking.
Conservation areas and old windows
Bexley has sixteen conservation areas, Old Bexley, Crayford and Welling among them. Inside them many homes keep their original single-glazed sashes, which mist and mark far more than modern windows. Decades of condensation leave a mark in the corner of each pane, and it has to come off by hand with a gentle product. We allow extra time for that.
Hard water
Water here comes from chalk and the tidal Thames catchment, and it is hard. Kettles fur up. Shower screens cloud within a couple of years, and bath taps go dull long before they wear out. We spend longer in bathrooms here than we would in a soft-water area, and that time is in the price. It is also why we soften our rinse water before cleaning pale wool carpets.
Keeping the same cleaner
We send the same cleaner to the same house whenever the rota allows. People prefer it, and it is quicker, because a cleaner who remembers which drawer holds the bin bags is not spending ten minutes hunting. For holidays and sick days we ring the day before and offer cover or a new day, whichever you choose. Keys we hold come back within the week if you stop. Nobody turns up unannounced.
How we price
Tenancy cleans are fixed by property size and agreed beforehand, on the bedroom scale (£156 studio, £425 four-bed), and an oven clean can be added for £31. Regular cleaning is £23 an hour weekly or £24 fortnightly. Carpets are priced by the room from £36 and ovens by the appliance from £77, while deep cleans cost £26 an hour for each cleaner plus £30 for kit, starting at £186. Everything is on our price list, and the number stays fixed on the day unless extra work gets added. One-off jobs have a £67 minimum; regular hourly cleaning does not, though each visit is at least three hours.
Putting things right
If the check-out clerk flags anything after a tenancy clean, call 020 8077 2940 inside two days and we will return to redo it, free and without paperwork. Our contact page has the hours, the terms cover cancellations and liability, and the areas page lists every neighbourhood we cover. The five jobs we take on are set out on the services page.