I love Craigslist. I really do. The only complaint I have is the flood of strange emails that arrive in my inbox after I repost my cleaning services ad. What do you want for free? Every month I repost my Village Maids LLC residential house & office cleaning ad with our 800 # and website address. Then the fun starts! I received a reply from some guy to clean his apartment in the city every other week. No problem, except that he is a NUDIST! WTF?! And he would be home sometimes while we clean. Naked. Him not us! I’m affraid I had to pass on that one. I tend to lean in favor of fully clothes clients. With clothes, they have pockets for the check to hand us after we clean. Where is a naked guy going to pull a check out of to give to us?

I respect peoples’ beliefs. I think it is your right if you ardently believe in something to follow that belief. For example I really believe in the BBC America program “Top Gear.” However, would I invite cleaners over to my hovel and subject them to watching it as part of the cleaning service? No, and I say that with all due respect to Jeremy Clarkson.

We have cleaned many homes with large bathrooms and the jaquzzi type tub. Many times it seemed as though the jaquzzi was not even being used, but we still cleaned it anyway. Village Maids LLC’s cleaning service is very thorough, and we think it is better to clean everything as a matter of course so that we know for sure when the last cleaning was. These larger bathrooms also have the large shower stall enclosure in addtion to the jaquzzi, and in most of the cleanings we have done it is the shower stall area that is the most dirty with soap scum.

Soft scrub works well on the shower stalls, but we are also using Greenworks bathroom cleaner and that also works well. For large bathrooms we start with the tubs and showers first, although I suppose it doesn’t matter if you start with the sinks and toilets. After everything is cleaned we mop the floors and replace the throw rugs. In one bathroom I had moved these decorative fish in order to clean around them, and when I was finished I wasn’t sure if I put them back in the right order!

Team 1

We recently sent out our first batch of postcards. They are the oversized ones, and have our photo prominently on the front along with our name, Village Maids LLC. We sent them to targeted areas based on home value down here in the beach area of southern Delaware, Bethany Beach, Ocean View, Rehoboth Beach, Fenwick Island, etc. Here is the picture from the postcard:

See, our shirts match! The postcard really has limited space, so we just put the basics on it, residential and office cleaning service, reasonable rates, our phone number and web address. I think they turned out ok, and we had the option to send one to ourselves as an example. We also put our logo on the postcard:

Does Simple Green count as “natural?” I thought natural products are the ones that you had to create yourself like McGuyver, with potions and measurements and teaspoons of this and that. Village Maids tries to use these off the shelf natural cleaning products and they do the job, but are they really natural? Windex makes a muti-purpose cleaner with vinegar added, but it’s still Windex right? Many of the products that seem to be natural are existing ones with lemon added, or vinegar, or this scent.

We use alot of mixtures with baking soda and that works well enough, but there is also the time element. We need to get in and out of our assignments within a certain time frame, and the off the shelf natural products work nicely for this. The only other alterantive is to wake up hours earlier before our jobs and begin creating different cleaning formulas with vinegar and baking soda and lemon to take with us.

I have been using an economical but effective vacuum, one from the Bissell line. The vacuum is simple but cleans very well and has a quick draw hose and attachment that work fairly well. The problem I am having is that I keep seeing cooler and more expensive vacuums on tv and don’t know if I should upgrade. Is Village Maids LLC ready for a high end vacuum? We will just beat the crap out of it anyway, so would an expensive vacuum even make sense?

The one problem with the economy vacuum we use now is that is a bagless version that fills rather quickly, even faster when there is pet hair. At one house I had to empty the vacuum 7 times! It was filled with pet hair! Maybe a larger vacuum would be the way to go instead of coolness. The one I am looking at has a UV light built into the vacuum. How cool is that? The light is so people can tan while they do housework, and I think it is a great innovation.