If you've been putting off doing the spring cleaning since January and know it won't get done till summer, then Absolutely Spotless could be of use to you, writes Emily Manson.

As a full time worker and the owner of a two bed flat and one cat, I have to admit that I occasionally let the housework slip a bit. In the seven years I've lived in the flat, I must ashamedly confess that I have only once cleaned inside my oven, my bookshelves are a dusty disgrace and my carpets were getting so bad I was thinking of ripping them up and replacing them with the obligatory wooden flooring.

The final straw came when the first of the weak spring sunshine arrived recently and showed my disgraceful windows in all their horrific glory.

The job was definitely just too big for a cleaner', so I called Absolutely Spotless, a Chiswick based professional cleaning company, to see if they could help me out of my housework hell.

They turned up on the dot of 9am and began with an in depth assessment of what I required, working their way through each room's needs. A general spring clean was the brief, with an emphasis on the shelves, windows and carpets.

I then left them to it, only to return four hours later, to a home that positively shone from top to bottom. My carpets were a different colour having been cleaned with an industrial carpet cleaner and there was not a cat hair to be seen, while the windows glistened and my bookshelves passed the finger test for the first time in living memory. The bathroom was clean and shining, but the oven was the most impressive and looked as new. In four hours my home had been transformed and felt the airiness only a deep clean can provide.

Because these are professional cleaners, they are not the company to get in for a weekly clean, they are mainly used for spring cleans, when moving home and other one off cleaning jobs.

Everything is individually priced before the work is carried out, so customers know what they are spending and can amend their brief according to their budget. Jobs range from £5 to clean the floor to £20 to clean the oven with the most expensive items being £30 to deep clean the carpets and £30 to clean the windows.

At £200 for the work that took three men four hours to complete in my home, I was left with the feeling that this was money well spent, especially as they did leave my flat absolutely spotless.' For more information call 020 8932 7360 or visit www.absolutelyspotless.co.uk