Let’s be real honest here..No one wants to clean their own house so it takes a special person to want to clean other people’s homes for a living! After being in business for over 23 years, I’ve gotten to know many households and many housekeepers. No one thinks how hard it is to keep staff wanting to clean and deal with so many other people’s dirt. I’ve got the inside scoop on who, what, why, and how the Invisible Worker feels, and what they deal with. Since the customer is the Boss, it’s usually an unspoken truth within a person that ends up making or breaking a housekeeper.
It’s Personal Beyond Your Dust and Dirt.
Although we try to make every customer feel personally special, you are not the only client they have! In our business, we send out two ladies that are to care for up to 4 homes a day. That’s four different homes filled with personalities and needs that they have to personally cater to in one shift. Now we may not meet the people in person, but cleaning after someone will tell you about their personality. Imagine having 4 spouses and 4 families 😵. So if a housekeeper you usually see has now come and gone, it may be a personal issue with them, or another house they care for that made them leave the job. Cleaning is personal to the housekeeper once they establish a routine and relationship with the client’s home, pets, and belongings. It’s O.K to be personal with the person touching your personal things. Saying Hello and Goodbye, thank you and I appreciate you will help all relationships, especially this one.
Why You Should Cancel Your Routine Cleaning Appt.
Being sick costs more money than anyone wants to spend on missing work. Please alert your housekeeping company if someone has been 😷 sick (minus allergies as that’s way too common in Texas), had 👀👱🏼♀️ lice, or a pet 🐕🐾had fleas. Now let’s go back to the thought that you’re not the only client! There’s not enough disinfecting 🛑any housekeeper can do to stop the immediate spread of untold illnesses.We want to disinfect the next home and not infect the next home
Pets Don’t Like Vacuums! 🐾
Our pets are part of our family and we all take up for them as if they wouldn’t harm a fly. What needs to be considered is that pets are territorial. 🐾 Nearly everyone’s home has pets and your housekeeper is carrying the scent of the last home (including the pets of that home) all over them. So please introduce your pets to the housekeeping company before handing the dirt over. That way they have been properly introduced by you the homeowner to let them feel peaceful about the people with the vacuums.
The Client Is The Boss And They Can Fire Everybody!
Here’s a quote that comes to mind for this one. “Cleaning the house with people inside of it is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos”. Since you are pretty much the housekeeper’s Boss, imagine if your Boss was around while you were working on a project with a demanding deadline! If it’s a must that you are home to work, be courteous to personally state where you will
be working to stay out of their way while they are also working. While providing Home Cleaning in Austin, we have many clients that do work from home. We make sure to give them a routine as to how we will clean their home so that we can work safely and efficiently out of each other’s way. It’s all in the communication and respect of each other’s jobs.
Extra Costs Extra
Life gets hectic, and that’s usually the reason you hire help! There are however times of bathroom explosions that occur or messes that you just didn’t have time to pick up and that’s just life. A kind tip with a personal note of appreciation goes a long way when someone walks into an extra mess with no extra time being paid to clean it.
“A person who feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected”
This quote could also be told backward. A person who is expected to do more but is not appreciated will usually do less…
The Housekeeping Industry can be a very high turnover field fueled by some of the reasons above.
Its very intense daily, and housekeepers are the Invisible Workers that are expected to do more but appreciated less.
Being a housekeeper first, before I was a business owner, helped me empathize with everyone I hire in our RoundRock home cleaning service.
I personally hire individuals that need a little push to their next phase of life.
I also learned awhile ago that I actually don’t own a Cleaning Service, I own a mentorship program for people to grow through. I help our staff in areas of their life outside of cleaning that can help them grow to the next level.
Cheers!