With the sizes of today’s homes that average 4 or 5 bedrooms, a living room and a recreation room, several baths and professional style kitchens, most families with or without children and working parents need a helping hand. This is where the ideas for starting a house cleaning business may be just the answer for those who have great organizational skills and don’t mind cleaning as a business. The new business owner finds their talents become sought after. Eventually they need to hire cleaning associates to manage additional work loads. This is how house cleaning businesses grow.

The Steps To Owning A House Cleaning Business

Before attempting to start this type of business, it’s necessary to create a business plan that includes the specifics of the work to be done, the pricing and business expenses if bonding, insurance or licensing is necessary. In most cases, licensing is usually limited to businesses. So, residential cleaning services may only require bonding and liability insurance. These are basically protections requested by clients who have valuables on premises. Although, cleaning businesses for residences are less complex, there are still a few issues that should be worked out before the first job is accepted.

House Cleaning Job Proposals and Terms of Service

The business owner needs to decide whether their services will be limited to per diem work or if a contract for long-term cleaning services is necessary. In either case, it’s a good idea to protect the business with a pre-written job proposal that outlines the duties that will be covered, the time and dates of the work to be done and the terms of payment. Don’t forget to include a proposal approval, signed by business owner and client. This insures both parties understand the terms of the proposed work and the payments to be rendered.

Advertising and Promotion

One of the most effective ways to advertise is the least expensive: a business card. Next, consider posting business cards and printed flyers locally and advertise in newspapers or online. Attract customers by offering a one-time discount.

Truth be told, the cleaning business is one of the best businesses to get into. It has a low cost of entry barrier and anybody with a hard work ethic can do it and make a comfortable living at it too. The reason is because people don’t like house work. But as they say, what is one person’s junk is another man’s treasure, or in this case their livelihood.

Getting cleaning jobs might be hard at first as being a cleaner does require a level of trust from the house owner. You might want to first start off with a few family and friends and then let their word of mouth spread. Once you get a few references, then things really start to pick up. Due to the trust issue, new clients depend a lot of the recommendations of their friends. And seriously, what better proof of your value than when they walk into their friend’s clean houses?

Another good thing about being a house cleaner is that you can take as many clients as you want or you can scale it back to be a part-time operation. This business is great for stay at home moms who want to make a bit of extra money. And because houses get dirty all the time, if clients are comfortable with you and the service you provide, you get repeat customers. This means a stable income while you call the shots and hours.

Therefore, during this spring season, if you have a knack for cleaning, why not look around for some jobs cleaning houses?

If you want to find employment in the house cleaning service industry, then you can either apply for a job through a cleaning company or try to find some clients yourself.  If you apply for a house cleaning job with a company, expect for them to conduct a background check on you.  Trust and reliability is a must as you are representing the company.

Most house cleaning companies also require that the house keepers either drive or have their own car.  This makes it easier to go from job to job.  Having your own vehicle or driving the company car also makes it easier to carry house cleaning supplies.  Some clients don’t provide the supplies or the cleaning supplies are not appropriate for the job.  In this case, the company provides the cleansers but make sure you get it all sorted out so you have everything you need before going to the job.  Also check your gas mileage if you are using your own car.  Later on, you can submit a claim so you can ask get reimbursed on that as well.

If you already have experience cleaning through a cleaning company, it gives you more confidence that you can branch out and take house cleaning jobs privately on your own.  Make sure you get references from clients directly as this will go a long way to getting new customers.  In most cases for people looking for domestic cleaning serivces, they fear people stealing from them.  Also, they will feel more comfortable going with a cleaning company first so they will have recourse to complain.   Therefore, to have a stack of good references and referrals will go a long way to allay those fears that you are reliable and can do the job.

If you have other house management skills beyond house cleaning, put them on your resume.  Most clients are looking for time saving house keeping skills so if you can cook, do the laundry, would not be adverse to running errands or walking the dogs, list those extras on your resume as well.  You want clients to find your services beyond a normal house cleaning job invaluable and therefore pay accordingly to your efforts as well.