Perhaps it’s my fault for having five children, five dogs and two cats (plus four chickens and one horse, though they can’t be held responsible for Lego on the floor and fistfuls of fur on the sofa). My house is a perma-mess.

And this, surely, is why cleaners keep sacking me. For the great unspoken rule of the merry-go-round that is hiring and, crucially, keeping a cleaner is that your house must essentially be pristine before they come.

When we first moved into our six-bedroom Essex farmhouse, we had only three children, and the tide of plastic toys and clumps of cat hair had not yet infiltrated.

Not many months after our arrival, however, I looked out of the kitchen window and realised the bucolic scene outside was increasingly obscured by bluebottle-filled cobwebs and grubby handprints. I saw the light – or rather, didn’t – and realised the house was becoming a health hazard.

In the beginning we used agency cleaners, who arrived looking as lacklustre as the murky water in their bucket. I remember eyeing the filthy mop and knowing they hadn’t rinsed it out since the last job. Not a good start.

When I asked one of the cleaning duo to iron some shirts, she did it one-handed, which wasn’t a sign of great ironing proficiency but to leave the other hand free to hold her phone.

We decided to find a non-agency cleaner with whom we could establish a relationship. A local. Someone who would get to know our family’s foibles and wouldn’t leave new creases in my husband’s shirts.

The first lady who turned up for an interview – on reflection, this was very much her interviewing us – said she would need six hours a week to tackle the house. Six hours! She was right, but that made her too expensive.

When Sybilla Hart first moved into her six-bed Essex farmhouse, she hired agency cleaners but soon wanted to find a non-agency, local cleaner who her family could form a relationship with

So we hired someone with lower standards – significantly lower.

This was the cleaner who, when one of the dogs had an accident on the kitchen floor, sucked up the poo through the pole of my bagless Shark vacuum.

When I questioned this, my mind boggling and the Shark stinking no matter how much disinfectant I poured into it, she said she couldn’t bend down to pick up the offending article because of her bad back.

Well, I was nine months pregnant and couldn’t do it either. The house was quite literally going to the dogs. We had a contretemps and she sacked me as a client.

Then a friend mentioned Anna, who had a reputation as a ‘cleaning wizard’. But she warned I would never get a slot with Anna. Not only did she have a waiting list, she would surely raise her eyebrows at my menagerie of children and animals. Still, it was worth a call...

In the end I think Anna took pity on me, agreeing – after some blatant begging – to squeeze me into her schedule for a mutually acceptable three hours a week.

I was over the moon. Anna whipped round the house dusting each room with her array of precisely defined coloured cloths. As she popped the sodden mop head into a plastic bag to take home to wash at her house, I breathed a sigh of relief.

She didn’t even seem to mind the surfeit of Peppa Pig merchandise, nor the muddy paw prints. Anna was heaven-sent and I was in love.

Even more so, considering the state of the house by the time she started. I had just had my fifth child and won’t pretend it was anything other than a tip.

The children were, by then, 12, nine, six and four, plus a newborn, and I was either breastfeeding or looking after the little ones. Tidying fell right to the bottom of the (huge laundry) pile.

This didn’t seem to faze wonderful Anna... at first. But as time went on the cracks began to show.

Her new cleaner, Anna, was an instant hit. But one day when Sybilla apologised for the house being so messy, the atmosphere shifted and she noticed Anna become steely

One day, a couple of years after she’d started with us, I was sitting on the sofa juggling a toddler and my work laptop when I apologised that the house was a mess.

For the first time, I noticed a small shift in the atmosphere. ‘No change there then Sybilla,’ she replied, a hint of steel in her eyes.

Granted, it had not been a good morning: a child had smothered one of the dogs with Sudocrem and my favourite Valentino Waterlily blusher had somehow upended itself on the bedsheets.

I looked around. The place was worse even than usual. Had Anna’s weekly visits lulled me into a false sense of security? Had I stopped even trying?

So I attempted to up my game, but the die was cast. Even the most saintly, professional cleaner has her limits, and I started to receive messages from Anna with a whole manner of excuses as to why she couldn’t come. Her car wouldn’t start. She had a cold. So did her child. And the dog.

When she did come, there was a new attitude. A permanent side-eye at the state of the place, a grunt of displeasure upon opening a bedroom door, an audible sigh as she contemplated the bathroom. Her judgmental stare was making me feel increasingly embarrassed.

By the time my youngest started nursery aged three, she’d had enough. Yes, I was sacked as a client again.

All the fur was triggering her allergies, she said, and the mess she found upon arrival made cleaning the house akin to wading through treacle.

For a while I grieved her absence. Then I rolled up my sleeves and decided to do it myself in a bi-weekly cleaning frenzy. I rope in the kids and my husband too and somehow we get through it.

The house is reasonably clean now, though as messy as ever. But at least the only person judging me for it is me.

• Anna’s name has been changed.