dangermom: I’d say about 40% squalor recovery, 30% following up, and 30% one-shot, low-impact jobs. If someone doesn’t ask me to follow up, I’ll never know if they reformed or not. Most follow-up clients, however, manage to rein themselves in fairly well. Except the kitten family. As far as advice, I’d just say “Do a little bit each day. Never give up; you deserve a nice house.”
Dung Beetle: I was working as a restaurant hostess, and during slow times, I would help the waitstaff with sidework. One waitress was particularly impressed by how neatly and efficiently I rolled silverware and so forth. One day, she and I were chatting while she was on her break. I described how I’d spent my morning putting Mr. Rilch’s work bag back together after he’d come back from a location shoot. “And I put all the gum and candy together, and all the batteries in the charger, and I clipped the C-47s to a piece of sashcord, and put the call sheets in chronological order…”
“Wanna come clean my house?” She actually wasn’t kidding. So on the next day we both had off, I went to her house and reassembled the living room and the kids’ rooms. This became a regular gig, and soon word spread. Which is just as well, because that jerk of a manager was never going to make me a waitress.
tofergregg: I don’t bring a vacuum, because most everyone has one. I do bring a mop and bucket, plus sponges, a scrub brush, toothbrush, paintbrush, putty knife, disinfectant spray, glass cleaner, soft scrub, cleanser, furniture polish, duster, trash bags, soft cloths and…I think that’s everything!
Avarie, that sounds odd. At Merry Maids, we brought pretty much all the same stuff I have now, plus a vacuum. I do ask my clients if they want me to use their products, but they rarely express a preference.
TruCelt, I do one room at a time. I usually start with the powder room because it’s small and easy to do, so the client will see a tangible result right away. (And yes, it’s good to know that’s taken care of for my own purposes!) I do one room at a time for several reasons. For one thing, items tend to migrate into rooms they don’t belong in. When I clean a bedroom, for instance, anything that doesn’t belong in there gets redirected to the correct room, or the “undetermined” pile if necessary. For another, it’s better all around if I can say the family room is done, rather than that all the trash is picked up in the whole house but most of the rooms still look nasty.
There are too many tips to list here, so I’ll stick with the one habit. When storing things you’ll be using on a regular basis, keep them where you can see and easily reach them. Don’t toss your spice jars into a basket, three or four deep, all jumbled. You’ll end up buying paprika three times because you think you don’t have it. Keep them on a shelf. They don’t have to be perfectly lined up, but they do have to be upright. Don’t keep your DVDs in crooked vertical stacks. Put them on a shelf too, upright and with the spines facing outward. Better yet, ditch the boxes and keep the disks in a binder. You can get one at Circuit City or Best Buy.
You don’t have to keep everything organized according to some super-secret filing system. The good news is, if you keep everything aligned and visible, you don’t need a filing system, because you’ll be able to look around and find what you want!
