We need someone to do our cleaning and maybe some ironing but where do we start to look. In the abscence of a friend or neighbour's recommendation, many people are turning to a professional cleaning service.

But, how do you find a cleaning company that you will be able to rely on? Just going through the phone directory can be a daunting task and you still do not know who you can trust. Using the internet can give us more information for our initial research but we need to have a logical approach.

Firstly let's decide what we want out of this arrangement.

Someone to clean the house. OK. Do we want the same work done every week or do we want the flexibility to have the basics done each week such as dusting, vacuum cleaning and cleaning of the kitchen and bathroom and then specifics when we choose such as cleaning kitchen cupboards or the oven?

Will we want ironing done? If so we will need to allow extra time for this to be done.

Do we have a specific day of the week, and time in mind? It may be we will want to be present when the cleaner comes to do their work until we can be comfortable with them in our home. Eventually we will enjoy the freedom of being able to do other things or go to work knowing the cleaning will have been done when we come home.

Next we can decide on the type of cleaning company we are looking for.

As it's our home we want cleaned we should be looking for a cleaning service that has experience in domestic cleaning rather than one used to office or commercial cleaning. We need a company we can trust and so we should probably expect them to have been in business for a number of years. We should also expect the company to be able to provide references from satisfied customers. We would also expect them to meet our requirements listed above.

By now we should have narrowed the candidates down and so we need to speak to the cleaning services to ask them about their cleaners.

How do they check their cleaners?

Will there be any language problems?

Are all their cleaners legally entitled to work?

Will the same person come each week?

Check the prices. Do they charge an hourly rate or do they charge a rate for the job?

Finally, make a note of how easy it was to contact the company. Were they friendly and courteous with the information. If it was difficult to contact them when we are making a sales enquiry then that does not look good were there to be a problem.

Now armed with all this information we should be able to make our choice of a good cleaning service with confidence.