Monster Cleaning Dalston is a small firm cleaning flats and houses across E8, with the N16 and N1 edges either side of it. Check-out cleans and hourly housework fill most of the diary, and carpets, cookers, upholstery and the occasional team deep clean fill in around them. No part of the pricing is saved up for the phone call. Move-outs open at £156, weekly housework runs at £23 per cleaner per hour, and nobody has ever been charged for the miles.
Where the round actually goes
E8 at the centre, N16 above it and N1 alongside, the whole lot inside the London Borough of Hackney, with E2 at Haggerston and E5 at Clapton off the edges. That compact round is how the van stays close.
Five kinds of home in a few hundred metres
Dalston is a patchwork, which is the first thing that catches out anybody used to a uniform round. Georgian and early-Victorian terraces run along Dalston Lane and around Albion Square. Long rows of two and three storey Victorian terraces sit off Kingsland Road, cut into flats decades ago. Behind and among them are substantial post-war council estates, the rebuilt Holly Street and the Kingsland Estate included. Two newer kinds arrived on top: light-industrial and warehouse conversions in the streets behind the high street, and the new-build blocks of Dalston Square standing directly over the Overground station. The same job in the first of those and the same job in the last can be two hours apart, at the same price.
Access is the trade skill on this patch
Practically everything awkward here comes down to getting a person and a machine to a front door. The Georgian houses have steep narrow staircases with a half-turn and no lift, so a carpet wand, a hose and a tray of oven parts all travel up in stages. The warehouse conversions run three or four floors and offer a goods lift that is often locked over a weekend, which is a detail worth knowing on a Saturday. On the estates there is door entry and a lift that works, so waiting to be let in costs more than climbing. Dalston Square and the newer blocks want a concierge, a visitor name and sometimes a loading bay arranged first. Which of the four you are in tells us more at the booking than your postcode does.
Room by room, and how it gets priced
Dalston is one of the most rented parts of London, largely young professionals and creatives sharing converted flats and ex-council maisonettes, with turnover running through the year and a sharp lift in late summer. What follows from that is a check-out clean where one room changes hands and the communal kitchen and bathroom stay in daily use. The printed bands describe a whole property handed back empty, so they do not fit. Scoping is what happens instead. The room, plus whichever share of the kitchen and bathroom your agreement lands on you, priced during the call against the £67 one off minimum. A wider scope means more rooms to clean and a higher figure.
The water
Thames Water supplies Hackney hard, so a bathroom here eats more of a visit than the same bathroom in a soft water town. Screens go cloudy from the tray upwards. Tap bases crust over. Chrome and glass in the Dalston Square flats, and the rainfall heads in the warehouse conversions, fur within months of being fitted, and the furring happens inside the head where nobody can see it. That is a mineral bonded to the surface rather than dirt resting on it, which is why the answer is an acid descaler plus the patience to leave it alone while it works, and why those waiting minutes are priced in from the first phone call.
The zone, the filters and the market
Zone C’s 8.30am to 6.30pm hours, a borough dotted with camera-enforced traffic filters and school streets, and Ridley Road market’s six trading days all shape the timing, and every visit is planned around the three.
One cleaner, one address
A flat gets one person and keeps her as long as the rota allows. Households prefer it and it is quicker, because by the third visit nobody is hunting through cupboards for the vacuum. Most regulars leave a key or fit a safe by the door, and in the Dalston Square blocks the concierge generally holds one. Where there is an alarm, the code is taken once at the start and is never read out over a phone. Illness and holidays happen; when they do you get a call the evening before naming the cover or offering a different day, and a skipped week costs nothing. Nobody arrives unannounced. Ask for a different cleaner and it is arranged, with no explanation wanted.
Everything carries a printed number
Kitchen appliances make the shortest list. A hob is £23 and an extractor £28. Single and double ovens are £77 and £110, a 90cm range and a two oven AGA £143 apiece. Floors run £36 a room, £43 a living room, £61 for a through lounge and £41 a flight, with single rugs at £35 or £51 either side of 3 sq m. Upholstery starts at a £13 dining chair and reaches £57 for a two seater, and curtains bill on the drop at £35 or £42. Housework is £23 a cleaner hour weekly and £24 fortnightly, with ironing on top at £12 an hour. A team deep clean is £26 a cleaner hour plus £30 of kit charged once, so a pair over three hours is £186 and the biggest booking on the books is £498. Move-outs stand outside all that arithmetic, banded on bedrooms between £156 and £425 and agreed before a date goes in the diary. Every line is on the prices page.
One rate, seven days
Cleaners are working from 8am to 7pm on every day of the week and not one of those hours has ever carried a premium. Sunday costs what Tuesday costs, and so does a bank holiday. You pay by card or bank transfer. Machines and materials arrive with the cleaner, so nothing needs buying in beforehand.
When a check-out report picks something up
If the clerk marks down an item from your move-out clean, ring 020 8077 6967 within 48 hours and it gets done again for nothing. No form to fill in and no argument about who caused it. That call is by far your quickest route, because a return visit costs an hour and a deposit dispute costs weeks. Opening hours live on the contact page. The small print sits in our terms. Each job gets a section of its own over on the services page.
Questions we get asked
How far from Dalston do you go?
E8 is the middle, with Stoke Newington in N16, De Beauvoir Town and Hoxton in N1, Haggerston in E2 and Clapton in E5 around it. Nothing is added for mileage inside that, and living slightly beyond it is still worth a call.
Are the prices genuinely fixed?
The move-out band is. Settle the bedroom count and the figure stands unless the property turns out to be materially unlike the one described. The rest are published rates against a room, an appliance or a cleaner hour, so nothing gets invented at the door.
Why is a room in a shared flat priced differently?
Because the bands price a whole property going back and that job is not one. It gets scoped: your room plus whatever share of the kitchen and bathroom your agreement covers, quoted on the call against the £67 one off minimum.
The clerk has marked something down. What happens next?
Ring inside 48 hours and anything from the move-out clean that was written up is cleaned again for nothing. Send the report rather than the summary of it. Agents relay these loosely and the item described on the phone is often not the item on the page.