Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Make money sanitising offices and homes
Reading Time: 5 minutesAs the coronavirus lockdown eases and certain businesses start operating again, cleaners and those with experience in this area are likely to be more in demand than ever. So, could you make money sanitising offices, homes, or workplaces? The answer is yes!
As offices start to reopen, they’ll be looking for those with the skills to ensure their environments are disinfected and safe for their staff. The same is true for retail stores, dental and optical practices, and a range of other workplaces that have been closed over the past few months and now need to ensure the safety of customers.
Those who find themselves readjusting to commuting into workplaces and likely to cause an increased demand for cleaning services in their own homes, too. With an increased awareness of infection, the need for regular and thorough cleaning is no doubt going to be at the forefront of many people’s minds for the foreseeable future.
So, how can you leverage this opportunity and make money from your cleaning skills? Here are a few ideas on what you’ll need to consider if you’re looking to launch your own cleaning business…
- Where are your customers? And how can you reach them?
- Consider what you might need to do differently
- Advertising your business digitally
- Precautionary measures to consider
- Precautions for staff
- More cleaning business tips
Where are your customers? And how can you reach them?
In the first instance, if you’re setting out to make money sanitising houses it’s likely that your customers will mainly be local. This is especially the case if you’re looking to focus more on cleaning private homes than on offices.
In the first instance, you should make sure everyone you know who lives in your area is aware of your new venture. Word of mouth can take you a long way, so make sure your services are known! A good cleaner is in a position where they’ll find themselves being recommended widely by their clients.
You might want to spread the word further than your immediate network by taking out a small advert in your local community newsletter or newspaper, and putting a note up in the window of local corner shops. With queues still snaking down most streets, you’ve got a good chance for potential customers to see them! Try community apps like NextDoor, Facebook groups, and Gumtree, too.
Local shops and businesses can be a great place to reach out to as well. They’ll need to take extra safety precautions with their customers once they do reopen, and they might never have used an external cleaner before. This is a great time to get in touch and let them know about your offering, emphasising your experience and expertise.
Consider what you might need to do differently
Even if you already have a lot of experience in the cleaning industry, no one would argue that requirements have changed a bit over the past few months.
If you’re going to make money sanitising areas that might be infected by coronavirus, and do a good job, there are clear guidelines that should be followed.
These guidelines include:
- Sodium hypochlorite, which can be found in the majority of household bleaches, should be used to disinfect small surfaces
- A stronger solution of sodium hypochlorite should be used to disinfect larger areas, for example floors
- A solution with 70% ethanol is also a good option for surfaces that need to be sanitised
- Both 70% ethanol solutions and sodium hypochlorite usually start working on surfaces after around a minute
- If you can’t find them, you can also use sodium laureth sulphate, alkyl polyglycosides or cocamide DEA. Note that these chemicals will only start working on surfaces after five minutes
This video, aimed at those cleaning optical practices, explains this in more depth.
You should do your best to get hold of the chemicals mentioned above. You might be able to buy them wholesale, especially if you’re planning on taking on a large number of clients. It’s likely that these chemicals will be in cleaning products anyway, so check before you start sourcing them separately.
It also goes without saying that you should check that the chemicals won’t damage any of the furnishings, flooring, or surfaces, whether you’re in a household or a workplace.
Advertising your business digitally
After you’ve started to spread the word locally, you might also want to move into promoting your cleaning business digitally. You can do this by:
- Setting up a website that details your offering, prices, location and any specific or unusual services that your business can provide
- Setting up social media channels (including Facebook and Twitter), making your location clear and highlighting how customers can contact you and book your services
- Taking out advertising in local press, for example on their website
- Considering promoted posts on your social channels, which can advertise your services to potential customers within a specific location
Precautionary measures to consider
There are clear guidelines on what you should do once you’re back at work cleaning offices, homes and workplaces. They include:
- Making sure you social distance from anyone you might come into contact with, for example homeowners or employees of the business, at a distance of two metres
- Wearing a face mask, which you can buy online or even make yourself, if you’re in an enclosed space
- Increasing the frequency of your own hand-washing
- If you’re cleaning a private home, you shouldn’t work in any households where anyone is self-isolating because they have symptoms
- Extra precautions to avoid face-to-face contact should be taken if you’re working in the home of a clinically vulnerable person, even if they’re not shielding.
You should speak to the employer or homeowner before you start working for them, in order to make sure these precautions will be put in place. Remember, it protects their health and those of their families or employees as well as your own.
It’s also worth noting that if you’re removing stuff to be thrown away, that you ensure you have the rubbish collected by a reputable firm. With the internet allowing you to book such services online, it’s simple to rent a roll-off dumpster that’s an appropriate size for the current task at hand, ensuring you have ample capacity to get rid of all the clutter in one go.
If you’re planning on employing staff to work for your cleaning company, there are further precautions that you’ll need to take. These include, but aren’t limited to:
- Ensuring all staff have sufficient PPE
- Ensuring they know the general rules around social distancing, avoiding face-to-face contact, extra hand-washing, etc
- Making sure they have any extra chemicals or cleaning products that they might need (see below)
- Making sure you have communicated with the client on their behalf, ahead of their scheduled visit, so you know that they’ll be working in a safe environment
Clean up with more tips
If you’re feeling inspired to start your own cleaning company, check out these articles now!
- Old-school cleaning tips that’ll save you hundreds each year
- Make up to £45 cleaning in the nude
- Make money as a cleanfluencer
- Cheap, green cleaning products you can make yourself.
Have you started a new business during the coronavirus lockdown? We’d love to hear about it – let us know over on the forums.
Good info
Very clear information.
Really great info for anyone looking to get into this.