A great Mother’s Day present? Hire someone to clean the house and clean the windows

How many of us struggle to find that exceptionally wonderful gift for mom each year at Mother’s Day? Flowers, a box of chocolates, and dinner at a nicer restaurant, are the staples of Mother’s Day gifts. And, they’re appreciated. Mom would probably tell you that you don’t need to get her anything else. But, you know in your heart that, if you could take that Mother’s Day gift to the next level, Mom would just love it. So, how about hiring someone to do some of chores around the house, such as hiring someone to clean or wash the windows?

Those staples of Mother’s Day giving are so expected that they’re kind of boring. There’s no surprise. It’s kind of like buying a tie for Dad every Father’s Day. You watch him feign excitement but everyone knows he’s only appreciative that you took the time to acknowledge him on this day, as mom reacts when you acknowledge her with flowers, chocolate and dinner.

It’s not that you shouldn’t take her out for dinner. And the flowers and chocolates are still nice. But, imagine her surprise when she finds out that a crew of professionals will arrive at the house to clean – and clean the windows. She can sit back, smell the flowers and enjoy the chocolates while a cleaning service does a professional job of giving the house a professional cleaning. And, she can enjoy the flowers and chocolate while gazing out windows that clean and streak free after the professionals cleaned the windows for Mother’s Day.

Taking Mother’s Day giving to another level is not difficult. On Mother’s Day, you can give mom a certificate so she can schedule to have the windows cleaned when she’s ready. Or, and there’s still time with Mother’s Day on Sunday, May 15, you can schedule the cleaning to occur a few days before or after the holiday. That way, she’ll have nothing to do but enjoy the flowers and chocolates.

Water-fed poles keep window cleaners off ladders and safely on the ground

You’re the kind of business owner who thinks ahead and considers threats and opportunities and how they could affect your business. You understand the importance of making a positive first impression on potential clients (see our recent blog about businesses making positive first impressions). As part of making a good first impression, you wisely insist on keeping the windows clean. Unfortunately, with a multi-story business, this involves window cleaners climbing on ladders to get to the upper windows.

Of course, you insist that the company cleaning your windows is insured and bonded. Still, it’s a little nerve wracking watching those workers up on the ladders knowing that, with one little misstep, they could fall and hurt themselves. Besides, you don’t want your customers walking under ladders while the windows are washed. If only they didn’t have to climb on ladders to clean your windows.

It turns out there is an alternative to using ladders to clean windows. Qualified window cleaning companies have the right equipment to allow access to upper windows without climbing on ladders. The equipment is called a ‘water-fed pole.’

A hose is connected to the bottom of the water-fed pole. Most water-fed poles can reach up five-stories high. And, five-stories high, they do a great job in the hands of a qualified window cleaning technician. And the job is generally done much quicker; the window cleaners don’t have to climb up and down the ladders – they don’t have to move the ladders.

The point is that, with a water-fed pole, you’ll have clean windows without the worry of someone climbing around on a ladder to get them that way.

Keep your business and windows clean to maintain a good first impression

BUDDYZ Pizza in McHenry knows the importance of the first impression and takes pains to present their restaurant in a positive light, including with clean windows.

As a business owner, you’ve probably read books about the importance of making a good impression. No doubt, you realize this is a concept that extends to the physical presence of your store or office. That’s why you take the time to clean and organize. This is why you spend time designing your signage and decorating the front window to give potential customers the right impression. Of course, while creating a storefront-window display, you also make a point of cleaning the windows.

An Sept. 5, 2014, article, in Forbes magazine, refers to one ‘expert’ who suggests that first impressions are often “highly accurate.” Though another expert refers to first impressions as “frustratingly arbitrary,” the question is really a matter of how people react to their first impressions.

If you own and operate a restaurant, cleanliness is more than ‘next to Godliness;’ it’s one of the business commandments for a place that serves food. Someone who is considering your restaurant as a place to dine wants to know that their food is properly prepared and, in fact, safe. One sign they’ll automatically look for is the general cleanliness of your establishment. But, this also applies to other businesses.

Ask yourself, why would a hiring official reject a resume with a few grammatical errors from someone seeking a position as a welder? The answer is that the quality of the resume is a demonstration of the prospective employee’s commitment to doing a thorough job. It doesn’t matter that the welder will, probably, never have to consider grammar while welding.

Still, if someone thought about it, they might say, ‘I don’t care that things are unorganized in this store or office; why does it matter to me that the windows aren’t clean?’ They might figure that, once they bring the products they buy home, or contract for your services, they may never return to your office. But, they might also say, how good are can their products or services be if this is how little they worry about creating a good impression.

Worse yet, many people don’t consciously think about first impressions at all. The first impression is made silently, without conscious thought, while coloring their decision-making processes. This is why it’s essential to maintain a clean and organized store, restaurant or office. You can save yourself from that bad first impression. Oh, and don’t forget the clean windows.

Office cleaning checklist – don’t forget the windows

Do you have someone come in to clean your office? Or, have you assigned that duty to one or more members of your office staff, in addition to their other duties? Maybe you do the office cleaning yourself.

When your office is cleaned, is it done right? How do you know if the office is cleaned properly? This is not as much of a subjective question – depending on your personal definition of ‘clean’ – as you might think. There are two primary factors to consider when you determine if your office is cleaned properly: thoroughness and effectiveness.

Thoroughness refers to whether the office was cleaned in its entirety. Effectiveness refers to whether the office is truly clean. The latter refers to how clean and includes whether your office is adequately sterilized. This is an important question when you look at your office as a potential incubator where germs, and other nasties, can grow, thrive and infect you and your workers resulting in sick days that cut into productivity.

Sterilization is achieved through the proper application of effective cleaning products (be wary of those that might leave foul chemicals in their wake – there are effective cleaning materials that are based on natural products that don’t leave chemical landmines on the surfaces, and in the air, of your office.

In terms of what you should clean, and this depends on whether you’re doing a deep cleaning or a maintenance cleaning, you should …

• Remove waste, dump wastebaskets and clear clutter
• Wipe surfaces with proper cleaning products (test in an obscure area first to make sure the cleaning solvent won’t damage the surface where you’re using it)
• Sweep and mop the floor
• Wipe around doorways and handrails and other areas where people frequently place their hands
• Wipe and sanitize keyboards, computer mouses, printer keypads and other equipment that is used in the office
• Do extra sanitary cleaning in bathrooms and eating areas
• Clean vents, often found in the ceiling, as well as light fixtures
• Clean the windows and other glass surfaces

This latter step, is an area where it often takes a trained expert to do a good job. Frequently, when someone is less familiar with proper cleaning methods, it is very difficult to do a good job of cleaning the windows. It may look good at first but, as the window dries completely, spots and streaks will appear. And, to make matters worse, for the amateur, cleaning windows poorly takes much more time than it takes a professional to clean the windows properly.

A clean office will give your employees a better feeling about their environment, even if it is subconscious. Clean windows to look through are a big part of this. And, if you have customers coming to your office, clean windows will give them a better impression of your business, too.

Windows contribute to workplace productivity, but keep ‘em clean

Put an employee at a desk in a cubicle without any sunlight and, over time, you can almost watch them shrivel and wilt from the seclusion. To some degree, their motivation with atrophy. Like flowers, they need a sufficient quantity of the nourishing rays of sunlight. And, for sunlight, you need windows – clean windows that enhance productivity.

Once you let the sunlight in, keep in mind that it will shine on your employees, as well as their surroundings. Cluttered and dirty, their surroundings may do better in the dark. But, relatively neat, organized and with just the right sense of comfort (comfort that makes them feel at ease without putting them to sleep) the sunlight coming through the windows can produce an environment that is conducive to greater productivity. It can even help increase employee retention.

If the workplace is somewhere people enjoy coming to work, they’re more likely to want to keep coming. And, they’re also more likely to be productive.

This is not an abstract idea. A study in Psychology Today “links light exposure in the workplace to improved sleep and vitality.” The article also refers to a Northwestern University study that reported on “the detrimental impact of working in a windowless environment.”

Once you’ve accepted the idea that sunlight can improve the demeanor and productivity of your employees and, therefore, have also accepted the value of windows to let the sun shine in, it’s not much of a stretch to equally recognize the value of keeping those windows clean.

Dirt on the windows is not an appropriate filter for sunlight. The positive effects of windows on productivity are not enhanced when employees glance though dirty windows.

Don’t forget those dirty windows when preparing for a McHenry Christmas

Vivian thought of everything. She had a carpet cleaning company come out and do the floors – hardwood and carpet. She had a cleaning service clean her McHenry house and paid extra so they would do a thorough job. She got busy with her husband and kids to rake and clean the yard outside. She gazed upon the results of her efforts with satisfaction and then her smile turned into as she glanced out the window.

Vivian had forgotten something; she had forgotten the windows. And now, looking out the windows, she realized how filthy they were. Her dirty windows stood out like sore thumbs now that the rest of the house was so clean.

The truth is that windows often go, well, unseen. And they don’t, generally, get dirty overnight. It happens slowly. The dirty window is a progressive feature. And, because it happens slowly, we don’t notice it so much.

If windows went from clean to really dirty in one day, the difference would be immediately apparent. Consider what will happen when Vivian’s guests arrive in McHenry from California on Christmas Day. She’ll see her nieces and nephews for the first time in a year. For Vivian, all the growing those children have done over the past year will be obvious. But, for her nieces and nephews’ parents, the growth came little by little each day; they haven’t noticed the way Vivian will.

In a way, it’s fortunate Vivian had the rest of the house cleaned so thoroughly. It was only because of this contrast the cleaning created that she noticed her dirty windows.

Actually, it’s not surprising that she forgot about the windows. After all, the holidays are so busy who has time to think about dirty windows? But, more than just a matter of what your guests will think about your dirty windows, cleaning the house, which includes the dirty windows, is a way of showing respect for your guests. It’s a way of saying you care enough about them to take the time and effort to make things as nice as possible for their visit.

Of course, another nice thing is that, after they leave, those dirty windows will still be clean. If we don’t have a white Christmas, little doubt, we’ll have some snow not too long afterwards. The view of a pristine carpet of snow in Vivian’s McHenry backyard is something not to be missed. And it’s something you don’t want diminished by looking at it through a dirty window.

Now that Vivian has noticed that her windows are dirty, the next problem is getting them clean. Most people don’t like doing windows. But, beyond that, it’s also rather cold outside. Vivian is wondering how to clean her dirty windows when the water for cleaning the windows wants to freeze. The trick, as Bill Thomas, of Northern Illinois Windows, explained, is to use some window-washing solvent. Another trick is to hire a professional window cleaning company.

With a clean house, Vivian is ready for Christmas and her guests. And she doesn’t have to worry about dirty windows. In fact, she discovered that she can set it up to have a window cleaning come out and clean her windows every month. That way, she won’t have to worry about her windows next year either.

Fabric awnings look great until the elements and birds attack; a professional cleaning service can revive them

Those fabric awnings out above the door and windows of your store really add to the curb-side appeal of your business. And, for the money that they cost, they darn-well ought to.

As is often the case, the awnings in your shopping district are uniform in style and color. Individually, or as a whole, they give a sense that forethought and care went into planning for the area. As a community, they say that city planners were quite intentional about the kind of ambiance that would give the area the best branding.

For an individual store, those fabric awnings show that a storeowner hasn’t approached a business lackadaisically. Shoppers can safely assume that the kind of attention given to the awnings carries through the rest of the business right down to the level of customer service they can expect. But, what if those awnings don’t look so good?

Are those fabric awnings beyond hope?

Inevitably, if left to the elements, and wishful thinking, those fabric awnings will turn on you and your business. They’ll turn from making a positive statement about your business to making quite the opposite kind of statement. How does that happen?

Smog, soot, auto exhaust, sap from trees, insects, and even acid rain: they all take their toll on those once-pristine fabric awnings. The fabric is dirtied. It’s stained. Mold begins to grow. And then you can add the bird droppings.

Often, the birds like to perch on the ledge of the building above the fabric awnings. Those poor fabric awnings become a favorite target.

What all those elements, and the birds, can do to a fabric awning is disgraceful and appalling. And when enough damage is done, there’s no coming back, right? Not so fast.

Yes, you can save those fabric awnings

Actually, there is hope for fabric awnings in even some of the worst instances. As long as the fabric isn’t too threadbare, a professional cleaning service can often revive a fabric awning and bring it back to its prior glory, or very close, anyhow.

Using special water-based and eco-friendly cleaners, a professional can delicately remove some of the worst that nature, man and our feathered friends can throw at an awning. Watching a professional cleaning service bring a fabric awning back to life is amazing. Though it may seem that droppings, mold and dirt cover every inch of fabric, properly done, and in a short time, the awnings come around. You may find yourself commenting, “So that’s what color they used to be.”

Once cleaned, you should also consider sealing the awnings to protect them from further assaults. In the process, you’ll extend the life of the awnings significantly. There are sealants professionals can apply that will even protect the fabric from fading from the sun’s UV rays.

Fabric manufacturers recommend that their materials are maintained in order to extend their useful lives. This applies to fabric awnings, too. A little maintenance can go a long way.