907 What I Learned From Cleaning For Celebrities, Angela Brown, Savvy Cleaner

What I Learned From Cleaning For Celebrities

What I learned from cleaning for celebrities. When you clean for a famous client, the house is big, and the rules are different.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work for celebrities, the truth might surprise you.

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Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

What I Learned From Cleaning the Houses of Celebrities

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Woman Cleaning KitchenWhat I learned from cleaning the houses of celebrities, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We have reached 900 episodes of Ask a House Cleaner. So, we’ve been ruminating and thinking about the things that we’ve learned. This week, we’re excited to share with you some of the lessons that we’ve learned over the last 900 episodes and the last 25 years as a professional house cleaner.

Today, I would like to share with you some of the lessons I learned from working with celebrities.

I’ve Worked for Celebrities in Charlotte

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Football PlayerThe very first thing that I want to suggest is, it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be when you get a celebrity household. Now, I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. We have professional sports teams here. We have the banking industry, so we have a lot of high-level executives. We’ve got lots of Fortune 500 companies that are here in North Carolina.

And so we’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of the celebrities and top-level executives inside their homes.

There’s an Intimidation Factor with Celebrities

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Woman Cleaning KitchenSo the very first thing that you have to consider is there’s an intimidation factor when you go to bid the job. The very first thing that you afraid of is like, “Oh no, I’m not equal to them.”

Well, the reality is they are people. They’re God’s children, like the rest us. They’re regular people, like you and me.

The first thing that you have to do is you have to realize that you are a business owner and you are the expert and so they are hiring you to be the expert. They do whatever they do best, you do what you do best, that’s why they’ve hired you.

A Lot of Celebrities Have Money Issues

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Sad ManThe second thing that you have to realize is that a lot of them have money issues and even though they may be worth millions of dollars a lot of it is not liquid, so it’s tied up in other investments.

There are times where they have not been able to pay on time, like everyone else. It’s easy to say, “Well, they’re a celebrity, so I’ll float them the money.” Well, no, you don’t float anybody the money, because you can’t run a business that way.

The same rules that apply to everyone else applies to them. If they don’t pay for a period of time, whatever that time is for your company, you have to cut off their service. That sounds very unusual, but that is the case.

Celebrities Have Daily Chores Like Everyone Else

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Man and Woman Making BedAnother interesting thing I learned from working with celebrities is they have daily chores like us.

They eat pizza too! They’ve got pizza boxes and stuff like that lying around their houses as well. It’s easy to think that they live in these fancy cribs, which many of them do, but they also have the daily chores that everyone else has. They have laundry, they have to make their bed every single day.

Now, they may pay someone to do it, but those chores still exist. They still have to clean out the toilet,  have to wash the toothpaste off the counter. It’s easy to elevate these people and think that they are better than everyone else. The reality is the cleaning it’s pretty much the same, but it’s bigger and there’s more of it.

Their Homes are Bigger and There’s More Stuff

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Large HouseNow, one of the other things that I learned is their homes are bigger and there’s more of it. This means that you have a lot more dusting and you have a lot more fragile items.

You have a lot more custom art and you have to be more careful. So, you can’t work as fast as you might do in a home because of the risk of you breaking a $30 plate in one home, in a fancy home it might be a $3,000 plate.

The rules of engagement are slightly different, but you still have to treat everything with ultimate respect.

There’s Confidentiality With Every Home

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Angry GolferNow, that leads to the next thing, ultimate respect. There’s a confidentiality rule that comes with every home. It’s also included with celebrities, especially with celebrities. Because while they have chosen to live their lives in public there are certain things you cannot out.

What I mean by that is like we cleaned house for one nasty celebrity. Publicly, she had this attitude, but on the inside, she was actually a lovely, amazing person.

And so, while you would think well, she’s going to be a headache, when we took on the account.  Turns out she’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, but that was her persona and we could never expose that.

You Can’t Destroy a Celebrity’s Image

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Wealthy WomanAnd when she had some family struggles she actually asked if we would stop and pray with her. This was very uncharacteristic of the outer version of her, which is the character she was playing in public and so you can’t out that.

You can’t come out and destroy the image they have created because that is their brand.

There are certain things like that you have to kind of fall in alignment with because that is that their story.  That’s their life and you’re honoring it by cleaning their home.

Celebrities Get Sick Too

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Woman Having Bad Hair DaySo another thing that I learned from working with celebrities is they get sick like everyone else. They wake up in the morning, they have a bad hair day. They need a shower every day, like everyone else. They wander around in their pajamas, they take ill and they have to call out sick.

They’re not special in any way in the sense that they’re invincible and it’s easy to say, “Well, they are invincible because they have all this money.” Well, when you have all this money, you have all these extra responsibilities that go along with it.

And to maintain that lifestyle, you also have a bunch of people that are expecting things from you.

The levels of stress and the levels of depression and the levels of frustration they are also elevated. So sometimes they will want a shoulder to cry on. You’re like, “I’m not qualified, I’m not a therapist.” Yet you might be the person that’s there and the person that they’re willing to have you sit down and have a cup of tea with them.

Working for a Celebrity Will Broaden Your Perspective

What I Learned from Cleaning Houses for Celebrities, Man Cleaning ShelvesThose are all things that you get to navigate if you work for a celebrity, but I will share this with you. If you ever have the chance of working with a celebrity, you may want to consider taking the job.

Because while you have these illusions of what it’s going to bring you, it will give you a very broadened perspective of the client base that you have. And it will make you appreciate the other clients that you have.

It will give you a well-rounded view of the world that you live in, and the world that you work in.000 Savvy Cleaner Spacer Bar 2020Resources

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