Booking a cleaner in Sweden: what works differently

Hiring a cleaner in Sweden works differently from most places, in four specific ways. None of them are complicated, but all four surprise people who have done this somewhere else.

The first is the price. What you see is already after the tax deduction. Home cleaning is listed at 240 SEK an hour rather than 480 SEK, because half the labour cost comes off automatically. The higher figure never reaches your card.

You are usually not home

Cleaning happens on a weekday while people are at work. A key box mounted by the door is the most common arrangement, followed by a code lock. If you hand over a physical key, a written receipt records who has it and when it changed hands.

If you do want to meet the cleaner the first time, book a slot when you are home and say so. Many people do this once and then switch to a key box. The first visit tends to run a little longer anyway, because the cleaner is learning where things are and which surfaces need care.

This is normal rather than a leap of faith, and it is why the vetting matters more here than the introduction does. Nobody meets their cleaner at the door every week.

You supply the vacuum, not the products

The split is unusual. You are expected to have a vacuum, a mop and a bucket at home. Cleaning products are a choice: keep your own, or have them supplied and restocked for a small surcharge.

Move-out cleaning is the exception. There the cleaner brings everything, because the home is empty by definition and there is nothing of yours left to use.

The person at your door runs a business

Cleaners on Cleenki are not employees. Each one runs their own company and must hold approved F-tax registration, which is a condition for the tax deduction to apply at all. Before a first job they are ID-checked, insured, interviewed and checked against the police criminal records register. What we verify before approval sets out each step.

It also changes what happens when something goes wrong. You raise it with Cleenki, not with the individual, and there are two layers of insurance behind the work: the cleaner's own business policy, which we check before approval, and Cleenki's own on top.

The practical effect is continuity. The same cleaner returns to a recurring booking as long as they are available, they learn your home, and their rating follows them. A missed detail is their own reputation rather than a line in someone else's schedule.

Tipping follows from the same logic. It is not customary in Sweden, for cleaning or for most services, and nobody expects it. A rating in the app carries more weight, because it affects which jobs a cleaner is offered next. If you want to do something concrete, leave a good rating and book the same person again.

An ordinary clean is narrower than you may expect

A standard home cleaning covers floors, kitchen surfaces, the hob, the sink, the microwave, the bathroom, dusting, mirrors, bins and making beds. It does not cover the inside of the oven, the fridge or the freezer, behind heavy furniture, ironing, laundry, or the balcony and storage unit.

Say what you want prioritised and it will be. If the kitchen matters more than the bedroom in your home, write that in the booking once and it follows every visit, along with any allergies or products you prefer.

Those are not oversights. They belong to a deep clean, which happens once or twice a year and costs 300 SEK an hour after the deduction. Several of them can also be added to an ordinary booking as extras, charged by the hour at the same rate as the cleaning.

The reason for the split is time. A weekly clean is booked as a fixed number of hours set by the size of the home. Adding the oven to it does not create extra time, it takes the time from somewhere else.

Cancelling is free, but not at the last minute

Seven days or more before, cancelling costs nothing. Between six and three days, half the price. Two days, which is 48 hours, or less, the full price. Rebooking is always free when it fits the cleaner's schedule, and always free if a child falls ill or something urgent comes up. There is no binding period and no notice period. The areas we work in covers the City of Stockholm, Solna, Sundbyberg, Nacka and Lidingö.