Today I am starting the series of my tips for being a professional housekeeper…….
These are tips I have learned from the mistakes I have made and from experiences in running my own housekeeping business which I hope you will find of value.
Make sure you have the clients emergency contact number. It may not be the number you normally contact them on – it might be their office number if they are not using personal number at work. I will share an example of why this is important from personal experience.
On one of my very first jobs as a domestic cleaner the client asked me to let their dog out if it needed to go to the toilet, which I did – he was barking around my heals so I let him out. When I finished cleaning the kitchen I thought I should I let the dog in. So went out the back door and there was no dog ????????♀️
I walked around the garden and my heart sunk as I saw that the back garden gate was open. So this dog had disappeared. I was panicking, I thought “Oh my goodness, what is going to happen – I must find the dog in case it causes an accident”. My mind went to the worst places as I thought the dog could cause an accident on the road so I got friends, family and even one of my other local clients to help me track down this dog.
After three hours of running though parks, being incredibly stressed, calling vets (it was one of the worst experiences), we did find the dog. One of the vets called us and explained he had been handed in. So that was fantastic, got the dog back!
It caused me many other issues and resulted in me letting down another client that day. But more importantly it was the stress of thinking of what was the worst thing that could have happened.
Later on that evening when I managed to get hold of the client, I explained what had happened and they told me that the dog was always doing that. My heart sank.
The lesson here was if I had had the client’s contact number at work it would have saved so much anxiety.
It is also important to have the number in case you are concerned about a possible gas leakage….and that leads me to the final point on this, which is before one leaves the property here are some of the things to look out for:
- Shut the windows
- Ensure doors are locked (double check as some doors do not lock automatically and you need to physically turn the key to lock)
- Open fire places are not burning
These sort of things one must be really conscious of as you are in your client’s home which could probably be their largest asset. So we don’t want anything negative to happen in that home while it’s in our keep…
Click here to download our domestic checklist template!