Different Hats

I thought this would be a fun little series to start writing about since I’ve been cleaning just about my whole life.

The cleaning world has been apart of my life since conception. I was born and raised into it and then of course followed the footsteps of my mom when I got older.

My first job was working at a cleaning service with my mom right after I left high school. I worked there for seven years before my mom and I left to start our own business for a few years before COVID-19 destroyed it.

The main part of our job was, well cleaning the houses of people who can afford it. This is a luxury type of thing, ya know? Everyone should know how to clean up after themselves and take care of things properly, but unfortunately, some people are not like that.

I grew up around cleaning so it’s just natural for me to keep things clean.

And so, when I first began my cleaning career, I started with my mom and I learned the ropes pretty quick. Soon enough, I was out on my own running my own cleaning crew that I was in charge of and meeting the people of the homes we serviced.

I’ve met so many people. So many different types of homes. So many stories to share with the world.

People have different views about cleaning: either they accept it, bash it, praise it, abuse it, and etc.

I once had a friend who used to look down upon people that cleaned as a profession. She was someone that was born into a family with money and she didn’t really have to worry about those kinds of things. She had the mentality of “someone else will do it.” She would ask me questions like “how come you don’t just hire people to do the work for you?” or “why don’t you just sit in an office and make calls and estimates instead of doing the actually cleaning part?”

And I’d asked myself this question: why in the world do you even care?! Why are you so worried about my cleaning career?

This is my favorite part of my little rant – One day, she reached out to me asking if I could clean her floors in her family home. Real wood floors mind you. She was having some family function and wanted to impress her folks, but in reality it was because her dog used to pee all over the house and she’d just leave it to discolor and smell.

I declined her offer because I’m not a floor specialist, I clean the whole house because I have a process. Plus, that’s her fault for being irresponsible, not mine, and she wanted it done for a cheap price.

So, the person who looks down upon someone who cleans as a professional career, takes matters into her own hands and she attempts to clean her own wood floors.

She decided that instead of using a product that is meant for cleaning wood floors, like Bona or vinegar or Murphy Oil Soap…….she went for the bottle of ammonia.

She took ammonia and washed her wood floors with it. Destroyed them to the point where they had to be sanded down and repaired.

The person who thought I was dumb because I cleaned houses for a living destroyed the wood floors of her family’s home by thinking it was a good idea to take such a strong and powerful chemical to clean with.

Lesson learned for her I’m sure. Our friendship dissolved not much long after this event but for other unrelated reasons.

You can’t put people down for what they do for a living. We all come from different backgrounds of the world and have to find what works for us.

This is just one story out of hundreds of all my encounters with people and the cleaning world for the last fourteen years or more.

I’ve worked as a private home cleaner, I’ve cleaned tons of commercial buildings, I’ve worked as a housekeeping maid in a hotel, I’ve worked for myself with my mom cleaning. I still clean now but only part-time because I’m a mom with kids and duties, and I’m in college trying to earn an Information Technology degree and I’m trying to make it an an artist – So many different hats!

I’ve seen it ALL in the cleaning world. Naked people, unexpected deaths, fights, adultery, divorce, marriages, accidents, secret love children, and even witnessing my former employer be sentenced in a federal courthouse for tax evasion and fraud.

My goal for this series is just to share my personal stories for the sake of reliving the memory and smiling, to entertain anyone that has an interest in this, and well just to have fun with it. This is not intended to be malicious or negative, I’m just sharing my crazy experiences that even I can’t believe sometimes, and all because of cleaning.

So sit back and grab a snack and a glass of whatever you prefer to drink, and please enjoy the stories that I will be eventually sharing.

🙂