Squeegee: You Won’t Believe What It Can Do

Well, truth be told, the squeegee can only do one thing: squeegee. But it does it so darned well that it earns its weight on my caddy. Absolutely one of my favorite tools (it’s kinda fun) and one of my favorite house cleaning ‘tricks’. (I thought of it myself… along with 10,000 other house cleaners, no doubt!) You see, in each customer’s home, my […]

The Only Mop I’ll Ever Love…

Mostly I hate mops. Not to be insensitive toward long-handled cleaning implements, but string mops, sponge mops, buckets… awful. A Swiffer Wet-Jet works okay (without the heavy bottle of so-so cleaner that squirts all over the baseboards) but the pads are expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and I came to suspect that the chemicals in the pad itself were leaving a […]

How a Spray Bottle Can Change Your (work) Life

All workday long you are spraying surfaces. Huge swaths of square footage need to be wetted down thoroughly and evenly with cleaner: entire walls in the shower, across counter lengths, inside sinks, the microwave, etc. The pistol grip sprayer is your best buddy, and my heartfelt advice is: spend the extra two bucks and get a good one. […]

3 Steps to Winning Your First Customers

When you first start to clean for a living you need customers ASAP but have no professional experience, no referrals and no momentum. Take heart~ you have the qualities you need to jumpstart the process and they count for more than experience. Who are your future customers? Maybe they are older and in need of some support to […]

When to Use (or Avoid) Vinegar for Cleaning

Vinegar is on the short list of everyone’s natural cleaning favorites and, IMHO, deserves to be. But articles listing ‘1001 uses’ don’t help you understand how vinegar works… and that’s important since its acidic power can be used for good or for harm. Vinegar is technically a rinse agent, not a cleaner. (Shocking, I know) The thing it does better than anything else in the world of green cleaning is to dissolve […]

Hidden Expenses That Can Sink a House Cleaner

Most house cleaners bring their own equipment and supplies to the job and are usually given due credit for that expense when a customer weighs the rate they will agree to pay… whether by the hour or by the job. But there are many other (and greater) expenses that customers, and often house cleaners themselves, might not […]

The Unexpected Benefits of Cleaning for a Living

It was only after I was up and running with regular customers and an established house cleaning schedule that I realized I had stumbled into a jackpot of valuable benefits rarely found in other livelihoods.  Following are some obvious and not-so-obvious benefits of being a self-employed house cleaner: Set Your Own Schedule Control Your Work Hours: To a large extent, you have control over which […]

The Blue Scrub Sponge: Why It’s My Cleaning Tool Addiction

There are a number of cleaning tools I’ve come to rely on, but only one that I tuck into my suitcase when heading out-of-town for a visit… just in case I wind up puttering in someone’s kitchen. Seriously, I have no idea how to clean (well) without it…. That tool is the Scotch-Brite Non-Scratch Scrub Sponge, which allows you […]