Housecleaning

Q. Describe the most common types of jobs you do for your clients.

A. The most common job is a bi-weekly maintenance cleaning of a home. I have a very wide cross section of sizes of homes. Everything from a small condo to a 6000 square foot home.
Most of my customers are single career women with a nice home and enjoy having it clean without spending time themselves.
Next are couples that like to enjoy their leisure time without using it cleaning the house.
Retirees also like to save their energy for better things than cleaning a house.
There are families with children and pets that often prefer a weekly cleaning, but often still do the bi-weekly one to keep the cost down.
The smallest group of customers are men.

Q. What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A. Be careful! Since cleaning is not a regulated industry anyone can clean a house.
Ask for references, look for testimonials. Be sure there are background checks and that you know how to locate the service provider. Do they have a physical address listed? Is there a satisfaction guarantee? Will they do a good job? Do they clean your kitchen counter with the same cloth they used to clean the toilet? Are they trained? Are they bonded, insured, licensed? Do they operate as a business and pay taxes? If not, you can end up paying social security taxes on their wages retroactive to when they began working if the IRS determines they are domestic help. If they ever go for some government assistance including collecting social security someday, the question comes up about where they earned their income.

To operate as a legitimate business, there are costs that are incurred and that business needs to charge more for the safety and consistency they bring their customers.

Q. If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?

A. It is easy to take shortcuts the customer may never know you did. For example, how do you know the bathroom was sanitized? How do you know if clean rags were used? They may have used the same rag to clean the kitchen that was just used to clean the bathroom. Yuk!
You only need three cleaning products to handle 95% of the job. Any cleaning product that sudses doesn't clean better, it just wastes time cleaning up the suds. Try to only walk around a room once to clean it,
Microfiber is the name of the game!

Q. What questions should a consumer ask to hire the right service professional?

A. 1. Get references and check them out.
2. Be clear on what work is to be done.
3. Do they furnish product and equipment?
4. Do they have a checklist so you know what to expect?
5. Are they legal? (pays taxes, license, )
6. Do you feel you can communicate well with each other?
7. How do they obtain access to the dwelling?
8. Ask how they are going clean special surfaces (granite, marble, wood, stainless steel) to be sure they are competent.
9. Ask what kind of training they have had.

Q. What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?

A. 1. They should have enough room in their budget to be committed to doing the cleaning on a regular basis.
2. They should be prepared that they will need to tidy up mess (such as papers and clothes and dishes and toys) before the cleaners arrive so to get the maximum benefit from the cleaning.
3. They should think it through whether or not to hire someone at a bargain price with many risks or hire a business that has a higher fee, but very minimal risk.
4. They shoud figure out if they want someone that furnishes product and equipment, so they never have to think about that, or someone that will use theirs that they need to remember to keep stocked and repaired.
5. Decide to ask for references.
6. Make a list of the things you want cleaned, what are your expectations? Does it match with the person you are interviewing?
7. Be sure you feel you can communicate well with the cleaner(s).
8. How will they have access? Will they have a key? Will someone be home?

Q. Why does your work stand out from others who do what you do?

A. I believe that a good foundation makes a good structure.

The Original Dust Bunny's foundation is from years of planning, practicing, testing, questioning and then setting a good foundation for employees with a good wage, an atiitude of wellness and caring,

A team goes out for the day with a cooler with water bottles and a healthy lunch prepared from scratch by the Original Dust Bunny herself. No stopping for fast food! Only non-smokers can work here, The Original Dust Bunny does not want a house cleaning technician smelling up a clean house with stale smoke from their clothes.
The wages are broken into three parts, a healthy hourly rate, a per house add-on and a bonus for exceptional work. There is holiday and vacation pay and biweekly monetary rewards for good service and attendance as well. What does this mean to the homeowner hiring a housecleaner? It means the technicians going into the homes are contented people and they will naturally perform better than resentful, rushed, stressed untrained technicians. They value their job so they do a good job.
Thorough and ongoing training occurs and we are always open for new ideas. The Original Dust Bunny tries to be the kind of place people desire to work. This avoids absenteeism, job dissatisfaction with resentment and high turnover.
When you have a service business, the tools are the technicians and all goes well when you take care of the technicians.
The checklists have been setup to do a thorough and realistic job. The products we use have been narrowed down by trial and error. Same goes for the equipment.

We wear uniforms because we are proud to be the best of the best and the customers feel secure that there are systems in place and the company portrays a professional demeanor.

We do not have a large corporate structure with too many rules, we are not a franchise so we spread the extra money around at the local level.

We try to do right to the community by allowing our customers to donate 5% of their cleaning fee to a school organization of their choice. The donation is sent by The Original Dust Bunny quarterly but will be sent in under your name. You will be notified by email when this occurs and the amount of the gift.

Don't worry, there are rewards for you as well, Mr or Mrs. or Ms. Customer. Every quarter, you will receive a rewards certificate based on what you have invested in your home maintenance with us that quarter. You can redeem this for extra services that are listed.

Q. What do you like most about your job?

A. What I like most about my job is that the work I do brightens someone's day. There is satisfaction leaving a house where you know it is showroom perfect, sparkling and smelling fresh and clean.
I also like that I can provide jobs and a better life for people that work with me.

Q. What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A. Most questions are logistics questions like "When can you start?" "What time will you arrive?", How long it will take?"
"Do you want to use our vacuum?"

Q. Do you have a favorite story from your work?

A. I do not have any heartwarming stories, but a couple of funny ones.
The first one that comes to mind is a move-in cleaning I did when I first started cleaning houses. There had been an obvious rodent infestation and when the sun started going down, I heard "footsteps" on the plastic sheathing I had laid on the ceramic tile to retain the moisture of the enzyme cleaner I was using. I put two and two together that I was not alone and ran as fast as I could out the door! I went back to finish the next day making sure the sun was well up so the nocturnal rats would be gone for the day.
Then there was the house with the snake that I was coaxing with a broom to a better location. My cell phone was on "vibrate" so when I received a call during this drama, I thought the snake had somehow "gotten me" and I tossed the broom in the air and screamed.

Q. What do you wish customers knew about you or your profession?

A. I wish my customers knew that I am genuinely interested in doing the best job possible every time. My seasoned customers know this, but the world doesn't know it yet.

I think most customers know the job is hard work or they would be doing it themselves.

Q. How did you decide to get in your line of work?

A. If someone would have told me 35 years ago, I'd be operating and working in a cleaning business I would not have believed that!
I worked in an office environment for twenty years and had my own housecleaner!
Cleaning houses is very low on the list of glamour and prestige. When someone at a cocktail party asks what I do, the conversation goes dead and they make a hasty but polite getaway.
It is ironic, but my Norwegian immigrant grandmother cleaned houses and my mother cleaned houses for a living, so it was in my genes, I guess. I definitely knew how to do it and after I tired of dressing up business suits, hosiery, and heels all those years, it was appealing to go casual.
I have always had satisfaction from physical work and from time to time, I'd paint someone's house for a distraction.
I started reading, studying and purchasing equipment and products and started testing them. I still was not sure I wanted to do this. It is hard work and to do that all day, every day, sounded a bit challenging.
I found a couple friends homes that I could practice clean to be able to judge the time needed and raise my techniques to higher levels.
I took several years to developing all of this in my spare time. I finally felt comfortable that I could do the work when I launched full-time.
An appeal to me was that I could multiply myself by having a business and it could be producing income even if I was not there on the job at all times.
I had developed my husband's business into a success by stepping out of the comfort zone and knew I could do the same with this.

Q. Tell us about a recent job you did that you are particularly proud of.

A. I received a referral of a retired couple that was having a family reunion at their home in a month. Time was catching up with them and they were behind schedule to have everything just right. They both had some health issues that prevented them from making the progress they would have liked to.
I was happy they found The Original Dust Bunny because I was able to get them caught up with the tasks that needed to be done and they felt relief to have the list get much shorter. I worked hard and into the evening for a few days to make sure everything was taken care of and charged them a reasonable fee since it was a large job. They were very pleased with the quality of the work and happy the reunion planning had made so much progress. They ended up a raving fan and gave me a nice tip.