Should House Cleaners Take a Lunch Break While Cleaning? What are the rules and who is supposed to buy the house cleaner lunch?
Listen: Should House Cleaners Take a Lunch Break While Cleaning?
Watch: Should House Cleaners Take a Lunch Break While Cleaning?
So, if you have a question, you can go ahead and ask it over at AskaHouseCleaner.com Right there in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, there’s a little blue button that says Ask Angela a question or something like that. You click the little blue button, and a microphone pops up. You can ask your question right into the computer through your smartphone or your tablet or your laptop or whatever it is.
Today’s Question
Now, today’s question comes from a woman who called me on the telephone and she was really concerned because she’d been through several house cleaners. The concern that she had was her house cleaners that she had hired were stopping the cleaning while they were on the job and they were taking a lunch break. And she wanted to know, “Am I supposed to be providing lunch for my house cleaners “or are they supposed to bring their own lunch? “Are they supposed to eat their lunch “before they get to my house? “What is the rule?”
Today’s Answer – Lunch Break
Okay, so here’s the rule for house cleaners, in case you do not know.
Do not use your client’s time as your lunchtime, okay? When you’re on the clock, you’re on the clock; that’s when you’re working. If you’re going to a house, you can eat in your car. You can eat in your car on your way home or on your way to the next house. Do not use the client’s time to eat your lunch. It is a waste of their time and money.
Lunch Break Exceptions
Is there an exception? Yes, there’s an exception. Here’s the exception. Let’s say that you have a really long shift or four or five or six hours at a particular customer’s house. Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re going to bring your own smoothie for your lunch break.
Now, this is a nasty-looking smoothie, but I live off of these things. Well, I live off them number one because of the braces, and I can’t chew very much ’cause I’ve got elastics on most of the time. Hopefully, that ends soon. But this is LIVfit Superfoods that you buy from, I buy it from Costco. And it just comes in a powdered bag, and I take one tablespoon, and I dump it in water. It’s completely water-soluble. I just shake it up, and it mixes it up. I don’t even need a blender. And what’s in here is spinach and tomatoes and carrots and berries and a whole bunch of superfoods that give me enough protein to get from here to the next job.
Take A Lunch Break Without Stopping
So, I’m not stopping for a break, but I can keep this inside my cleaning caddy. And if I’m waning on energy or I find myself in one of these moments where I need a boost or a pick-me-up, it’s 100% natural, okay? I just grab it, I take a couple of swigs of it, and now I’m good to go for the next 45 minutes.
So, you are responsible, as the business owner, you’re responsible for providing your own fuel and your own energy. That is not the responsibility of your client. Their job is not to go out and go grocery shopping for you to buy things that they don’t normally eat to keep your energy up for the job. That is not their responsibility.
You Are Responsible For Your Own Lunch Break
Your responsibility to yourself is to make sure you have something that you can eat. And my suggestion is to stay away from sugar, stay away from sodas and high-caffeinated drinks and these Monster drinks and the 5-Hour Energy drinks and stuff like that, because what happens when you do the really highly-caffeinated sugar drinks, it sends your adrenaline into overdrive, and that’s okay.
That’s okay if you’re driving six hours or something during the night and you have to stay awake. But every time you do that to your system, it becomes less and less and less effective. So, you’re sending your adrenal system into shock, and for what? So that you can mop a lady’s kitchen floor? Don’t do that, okay?
Don’t Deplete Your Body’s Natural Resources
If you abuse your system to the point where it doesn’t recognize something as strong as 5-Hour Energy – it’s because you’ve just depleted your system of all of its natural resources. In the house cleaning industry, you are your biggest asset. Your physical body and your well-being are your biggest asset. And so, you need to wake up every day, pop out of bed like toast, and you need to have energy that’s just flowing through your system. And it needs to happen without caffeine and without sugar, okay? Those are absolute killers for your longevity. And I’m really serious about this. I’ve been doing this for 25 years.
This is not a sprint to the finish line, this is a marathon. And you’re gonna wanna pace yourself and your body and your energy so that you can still be doing this as long as you are physically able. And if you just burn your system out, you got no reserves.
Longevity is a Marathon – Not a Sprint
I know a girl that’s in our network, and she takes five 5-Hour Energies a day, and she’s like, “I can’t stay awake; I’m just so exhausted.” Yeah, you are! You’ve completely depleted all of your resources. There’s nothing left. There’s nothing left. And so, it doesn’t matter if she drinks 10 cups of coffee a day or if she drinks 10 Red Bulls a day or if she drinks five 5-Hour Energies a day, she can’t stay awake. She’s just fatigued.
So, if you are fatigued, pull back. Get off the caffeine, get off the sugar, because that will just deplete your system. Now, having said that, our bodies work on a natural system. We need energy on a regular basis. So, this is like Basic Health 101, but you need to eat something every couple of hours because that’s how your brain functions. That’s how your body keeps operating how it’s supposed to.
We Take Better Care of Our Cars Than We Do Our Bodies
All of the organs in your body work based on the fuel that you give it. You would never think of getting in your car and driving for 800 miles and never stopping for a tank of gas. You have to keep refueling your body because, in the house cleaning industry, we are the product. We’re moving and vacuuming and scrubbing and cleaning all day. That burns a lot of calories. I wore a Fitbit for about two-and-a-half years and what I noticed was, on an average day, I moved about 40,000 steps, just cleaning houses. That’s a lot of movement! And so, if you’re gonna have that kinda movement, you’ve got to have some natural fuel.
This is just plain water and one tablespoon of the super-fit foods. And you can make your own recipe. I’ll throw chia seeds in there, I’ll throw blended up spinach or whatever; I make lots of my own smoothies. But I can suck on a smoothie throughout the day without stopping to actually eat something. Awesome lunch break. And as long as I keep my body fueled, I don’t feel the need to go through a drive-thru and eat some fried food that’s gonna also plug up my system.
There are also plenty of protein shake recipes available.
Your Body is Your Biggest Asset in House Cleaning
So, I want you to pay attention to this one concept. You can have the most expensive car in the world, and people do, they buy really expensive cars and they buy premium fuel, and they dust out every little nook and cranny and buff off all the fingerprints off the door and whatever, but they don’t take care of themselves like they take care of their cars. You, you, I’m talking about you personally, are your biggest asset in this business. And so, how you feel and the energy that you have is paramount to the success of your business and the longevity of the success you have in this business.
So, if you do nothing else, figure out a way to take care of yourself and your energy, and don’t do it on the client’s time. If you’re gonna do it on the client’s time, make sure that it’s you’re just having a swallow here or there. This is not stopping to have lunch, this is not leaving to go get lunch. Do that between your houses and respect your clients’ time, ’cause you don’t wanna lose business because your client feels awkward about the breaks that you’re taking. Don’t do that.
You’ve Got This
If you liked this tip, please pass it along to somebody that you think might benefit from it. If you have a question, head on over to AskaHouseCleaner.com, ask your question. And I’ll see you again on the next show. Until then, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
Disclosure
During the shows we recommend services, sites, and products to help you improve your cleaning and grow your cleaning business. We have partnerships with these companies to provide you with discounts, and savings. By clicking on and buying from the links in the show notes, we may receive a commission which helps pay for the production costs of the show.
Support the show so we can continue to bring you free tips to improve your cleaning and help you grow your cleaning business. THANK YOU!
About the Show
Learn how the show came to be, interesting facts about the show host, and other frequently asked questions about the show.
Resources For This Episode
BetterBody Foods LIVfit Superfood Protein Blend – http://amzn.to/2yndWJw
BlenderBottle Classic Loop Top Shaker Bottle – http://amzn.to/2ABYUpf
Protein Shake Recipes : Best 50 Delicious of Protein Shake Cookbook – http://amzn.to/2za2l46
High-Protein Shakes: Strength-Building Recipes for Everyday Health – http://amzn.to/2z9y1XC
The Blender Shaker Bottle Recipe Book: Over 125 Protein Powder Shake Recipes – http://amzn.to/2AEcrwz
DIY Protein Bars At Home: 31 Simple, Delicious And Nutritious Homemade Energy Bar – http://amzn.to/2ymRnoy
HOW TO: USE YOUR PROTEIN POWDER AS A MEAL REPLACEMENT – http://bit.ly/2o41ajx
The 7 Best Meal Replacement Shakes And Smoothies – http://bit.ly/2CeOsBo
20 Healthy, Protein-Packed Smoothie Recipes – http://bit.ly/2CeXy19
Permissions To Share
You Have Our Permission To Share This Episode
Show Sponsor
SAVVY CLEANER – House Cleaner Training and Certification – https://savvycleaner.com
HOUSECLEANING360 – Referral database of the world’s most prominent home service providers and the homeowners they serve. https://housecleaning360.com