A regular cleaner ends up with your spare keys, your alarm code and several hours alone in your house every week. People spend more time comparing toasters than they spend on that decision.
Most cleaning firms are honest. The vetting is not really about catching villains, it is about finding out whether the company is organised enough to be trusted with access. Disorganised firms lose keys, send different staff every week without telling you, and vanish when something gets broken.
The checks that actually tell you something
Public liability insurance is the first filter. Any established firm carries it and will name the insurer without fuss. The second is how they handle keys. A proper outfit can describe its system: coded tags that never carry your address, a signing-out log, a named keyholder. If the answer is 'the cleaner just keeps them', you have learned what you needed to.
Then ask who will actually clean. Some companies send the same person every visit and tell you her name. Others operate a rota you will never see. Neither is wrong, but the second kind should at least be able to say how staff are referenced and whether they are employed or subcontracted. A firm that employs its cleaners has more to lose from a bad one.
What matters less than people think
Years in business is a weak signal on its own. So are review scores in the high 4s, which most firms now show because unhappy customers rarely review a cleaner, they just cancel. A better question is what happens when something goes wrong: ask how a breakage was handled last time one happened. The firm that tells you a specific story, including what it paid for, has a process. The firm that says 'that never happens' does not.
The first month is the real interview
Whatever you conclude from the phone call, treat the first four visits as a trial. Be home for the first one. Leave the second and third unattended and see whether the standard holds when nobody watches. That test outperforms any amount of reference checking.
You can compare cleaning companies near you on this site, including what services each covers, or post the job and let local firms come to you. Shortlist two, not five. You only need one good answer to the keys question.
