How to get your cleaning mojo back and stay motivated can be difficult for a house cleaner.
Do you ask yourself how to reclaim your confidence after losing motivation at work? Are you struggling to find your cleaning motivation?
When you’re cleaning a homeowner’s house you need to pay attention to the details. Your cleaning clients will notice when you’re lacking motivation. When you can’t focus while house cleaning, it can turn a 1-hour job into a 3-hour job.
Listen: How to Get Your Cleaning Mojo Back
Watch: How to Get Your Cleaning Mojo Back
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.
How to Regain Your Cleaning Mojo
How to get your house cleaning mojo back. Did you ever find yourself cleaning and your cleaning started to slip a little bit and you weren’t as accurate as you once were? Maybe a three-hour job turned into a four-hour job.
Or you started self-doubting and it wasn’t as fun as it once was when you started cleaning for a particular customer.
Customers Can Make You Lose Your Cleaning Mojo
Sometimes clients can ruin your cleaning mojo. One house cleaner had this situation. “I ran into an incident last Monday where I was hired to clean the home of a new homeowner. When I arrived, he followed me everywhere and started being aggressive and loud.
He was mocking my cleaning to the point that he pointed out a small piece of dust on the toilet paper holder. Then he was verbally abusive and he told me I wasn’t going to make it in this world. I’ve been cleaning for three years now and I always go above and beyond for all my customers. I’ve never had any complaints before and I have a healthy waiting list.
Note, we did a walkthrough a few days before and he was the friendliest person. When he had to step out for a meeting I packed up, and I left, I sent him a text stating that I didn’t think we were a good fit. And I told him that I wasn’t seeking payment for the last three hours. Then he started texting and calling and leaving disturbing messages and he threatened me.
Don’t Let Clients Make You Doubt Yourself
Anyways, since this ordeal, I’ve been doubting my performance and doubting my cleaning and doubting me. I find myself being over perfect and hard on myself. Three-hour jobs are turning into four and five. It’s like I’ve lost my mojo and I’m feeling like I’m not good anymore at my job. Is there something you can recommend so I can get out of the slump and get back to doing what I love to do, which is cleaning people’s houses?.”
This is a heartless job and that you go into customers’ homes and for the most part the customers aren’t home. And so you did a great job and there’s nobody to say, yes, you did a great job.
Keep Track of Your Work with a Checklist
If you miss something, they’re very quick to call you on the phone and go, you missed something. Right?
Check your own work. You can do that with a checklist. If you go into a customer’s house and you use a checklist, when you’re done with the job or room, you check off the items as you go. You inspect your own work and as you inspect your own work, look at the room.
Make sure you didn’t miss anything. Is this a hundred percent of your capabilities? Did you do a great job? If so, check off your list and move to the next room.
Start Getting Your Mojo Back By Approving Yourself
First, you have to approve of yourself and your own work because where the mojo comes from is not your customers, but it comes from you.
Unfortunately, you had a crappy customer. He was mean. He was abusive, he threatened you, and he said disturbing things.
These are your words, and I’m glad that you left because it doesn’t sound like you were a good fit. You could have charged him for the time because you guys had an agreement. And you cleaned for three hours and he should have paid you.
You Will Have Nitpicky Customers
Now this said, if you are a house cleaner for the rest of forever, you’re going to run into customers that are super picky.
In a perfect world, people hire you to come to clean their house because they need it cleaned. They want the confidence of knowing that you know what you’re doing. You said on the walkthrough he was the friendliest of people. The walkthrough is where you share confidence and agree on terms with the customer.
Let Your Customers Know You are a Professional
You have to let customers know, you are a professional.
“I know exactly what I’m doing and I’m going to follow this checklist when inside your house. I got this.
You don’t have to micromanage me. You don’t have to follow me around. In fact, I prefer it if you don’t talk to me while I’m here. If you work out of your home, I trust that you have your business to do.
I have my business to do. I will spend 60 seconds when I walk in. I’ll say, Hey, how are you doing? I’ll say hi to your dog and then I’m going to get the right to work.”
Once you’ve established that right upfront. You’ve given them permission to let go of following you around.
Exude Confidence to Regain Your Cleaning Mojo
Tell them anything that’s checked off on your checklist, you guarantee with a hundred percent satisfaction. If for any reason they are not happy, you will come back and re-clean at no extra charge because you guarantee your work.
Now, once you’ve shown that confidence, once you’ve let them know that you are in control, they don’t need to be following you around and fussing. The reason the homeowners follow you around and fuss is this.
There are a lot of crappy house cleaners out there and they go to people’s homes and they fake dust and they fake clean. And when they leave, some of them don’t even use checklists. And the homeowner comes in and scratches their head like “the place looks the same. It was dirty before. It’s dirty now. What on earth did you do?”
There are a Lot of Lousy House Cleaners Out There
There are a lot of lousy house cleaners out there. They want to show up and walk around and then get paid. But you have to do the cleaning part if you’re going to get paid, right?
Customers have had bad experiences, but you’re not one of them. You have a healthy waiting list. And so before you take on new customers, go to your healthy waiting list and say, “Hey listen, I have an opening. I know at one point you only wanted a one-off cleaning. Any chance you want to go full time. I now have an opening.” Offer that to your healthy waiting list first.
House Cleaning Waitlist
A waiting list is people you have already done walkthroughs with. These are people that you have either cleaned for at one time or on occasion. As you have cancellations call the people that already know, like and trust you.
These are already people that they know what you charge. These are already people who you already pleased at one point enough that they wanted to stay on your waiting list. So before you start going to new customers, work your waitlist because there are people that at one time liked your service.
Maybe now they can afford it on a regular basis. And that is how to get your mojo back. It comes from inside.
What to Do When You’re Having a Bad Day
Listen to songs that inspire you, uplift you and make you feel good.
- And if you are the boss, you have to get up and motivate yourself each day and motivate your team.
- Nobody else that’s going to motivate you.
- And then keep on track while cleaning with your worksheet.
- Keep track of your successes.
Everyone Loses Their Mojo Sometimes
There are times when everybody’s going to feel down. It’s a biorhythmic thing.
Everybody has down days. And so on those days, go back to your list. Go back to your bullet points, go back to the things that you’ve accomplished.
Go back to happy music. Get outside, go for a walk. Express yourself in a way that makes you proud you own a business.
And you will pull yourself out of a slump to the point where you will be able to get back to the next house and you will be able to give them your best work.
Resources:
What To Say When You Talk To Your Self – https://amzn.to/3aYYCqd
Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward – https://amzn.to/3aTWlfY
To-Do List Formula: A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work! – https://amzn.to/2U8qZM4
Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact – https://amzn.to/2Wg0HtS
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – https://amzn.to/3b0WPkB
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