As a cleaning business owner, you want to clean more houses each day. It is the bread and butter of your cleaning business. If you are not cleaning houses, you are not making money.

This is why it is so important to clean as many homes in a day as you can. Now, I do not mean you are cleaning until 10 pm or that you are cutting corners to get to the next home. I mean, increase the number of homes you clean in a day, from 8 am – 4 pm, while still maintaining a Quality service.

When I started my cleaning business my service was all over the place. There was little consistency and little focus. If someone was willing to pay me, I would clean whenever and where ever.

As I started taking on more clients I was not able to keep up. I was starting to lose money. Not because I wasn’t getting new clients. But because I could not clean enough houses in a day.

This is when I knew I needed to tighten up my service and my business. Before I hired my first employees I needed to create some serious efficiencies in how I ran my business.

Additional Resources for Cleaning Businesses:

• Beginners Guide to Starting a Cleaning Business
• 5 Mistakes Cleaning Business owners make
• Guide to getting more house cleaning clients

How I was able to clean more houses each day

Here are the steps that I took to create systems in my business that allowed me to clean more homes in a day.

Please note, this article may include affiliate links. You can read the full disclosure at the bottom of the page.

Step 1: Proper Scheduling

Scheduling your cleaning clients appropriately will help you to clean more houses in a day. While scheduling seems like a no brainier, there is a bit of an art to it.

Schedule nearby homes on the same day

If I was going to clean more houses in a day, I was going to have to drive less and clean more. Commuting can suck away time you can be cleaning and making money. No longer would I clean a home on a Wednesday because that was what a client wanted. 

I re-looked at my schedule and rearranged my clients by location. My goal was to clean homes in similar or close neighborhoods on the same day. After that, when a new client signed up, I told them what days we had available to clean their home.

If a client really wanted service on a day I was not cleaning in their area, I told them that day was not available. I told them the days I did have available in their area. I offered a ‘waiting list’ so that when a day opened up, they would have the first choice.

Most of my clients signed up for bi-weekly service, so I would alternate days and weeks when I would clean in a particular geographic area. This way I could offer cleanings on a certain rotation in the areas we serviced on most days of the week.

I wrote a whole blog post on how to create a Cleaning Business Schedule. The article walks you through how to efficiently schedule your clients so that you can fit more in a day. 

Step 2: Offer a Consistent Service

Offering a consistent cleaning service will help you to clean more homes in a day through repetition. Your first step to offering a consistent service is deciding on your cleaning niche, and knowing what kinds of cleaning services you will offer.

Once you choose a niche, stick to it and do not deviate. In my company, we focused on residential homes with regular, ongoing cleaning services. We did have a few clients who owned businesses or rental properties and we did service these properties as well. Other than that we did not advertise these services and only did it for our repeat customers. 

Find your Niche and Stick to it

When I first started out, I was willing to clean ANYTHING. I would clean any type of property or offer any service a homeowner was willing to pay me for, does this sound familiar??? I was so excited just to get my first client, that I was willing to do anything they wanted!

But I started noticing I was becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none. I was not specializing in any one service. So I was not able to develop systems or clean as fast if I were to focus on 1 type of client or service. I was not able to create a plan for cleaning.

What was needed to clean move-ins/move-outs was WAY different than what was needed to clean recurring residential homes. It was difficult to stick to a checklist, let alone get enough experience under my belt for all the different types of niches and problems that may arise. 

I started getting a grove with the recurring cleaning services. I found I was able to clean them quickly and very effectively. That’s when I had that A-HA moment in my business. I had found my niche. I stopped taking just any cleaning jobs and started focusing my marketing on acquiring clients who needed recurring cleaning services. 

Once I choose my niche and started focusing on cleaning residential homes as a continuing service, I was able to create a plan to clean more efficiently. It also helped with my scheduling. I could book clients based on weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly cleaning services.

When I was able to focus on a consistent service for each home I cleaned, there were fewer surprises and more planning. I purchased all the equipment needed for regular maintenance cleaning. 

Step 3: Follow a Consistent Cleaning Routine

A consistent cleaning routine is where you follow the same steps with each cleaning and each house. Every space we cleaned in a home was cleaned in the same order using the same steps.

I know you are thinking, ‘But Roberta, no home is alike. How can I create a consistent routine?’ Well, all homes have at least one bathroom and separate living spaces, right?

The order in which you clean these spaces is routine. They may have different types of flooring or one may have more furniture than another, but they all have the same basic rooms (kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, lounging rooms).

Once you build a routine, you begin building repetition. The more repetition the better and faster you will become at cleaning. I teach this routine in my Maid Services Guide to Cleaning Professionally.

To create a consistent service to clean more houses you need to:

1. Decide what areas of the home you will clean first.
2. Develop a system of how each space will get cleaned.
3. Build a cleaning checklist of what will be included in your service.
4. Now, stick with it!

After I created my cleaning routine and stuck to it, I was able to clean more houses in a day. I would practice with each house I cleaned, and created a game out of it by tracking my steps. The fewer steps I took to clean a house the more efficient I became. When I arrived at a new home, I knew exactly how I was going to clean it.

When you clean in the same order and in the same steps, cleaning becomes automatic and second nature. There is no stopping and wondering what you will clean next. You begin building muscle memory as you transition from task to task easily and quickly. 

Step 4: Use Speed Cleaning Tools

When I started my cleaning business, I was not familiar with Speed Cleaning terminology.

I would read how companies could clean several homes in a day. No matter how fast I moved while cleaning, I felt I would never reach that point. The more research I did, the more I learned what speed cleaning tools were and the more I implemented the concepts into my cleaning routine the faster I was cleaning while still maintaining that high level of service my business was built on.

What are speed cleaning tools?

Speed cleaning tools are any tools that assist in cleaning quickly while maintaining quality. They are any tool that helps you clean faster and smarter.

Sample Speed Cleaning Tools:

Whisk Broom

A whisk broom helps remove debris (like cat hair, crumbs, and dust) from fabrics such as lampshades, couches, or dining chairs.

Razor Blade

Razor blades help with removing gooey, caked-on gunk. Think gum on the floor, sticker residue on the glass, or smudges on a glass stove top.

Short Duster

A Short duster reaches around knick-knacks, and electronics, hard-to-reach spaces on furniture and tables without having to hand dust or move items around.

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Before using speed cleaning tools, I was scrubbing and spending extra time on tasks. There was no way I was ever going to clean more homes in a day because it took me too long to clean a house.

When I thought of professional cleaning businesses, I figured they used fancy tools that cost too much for me as a solo cleaner just starting out. But I found that speed cleaning tools did not cost that much, things like a scrapper or a whisk broom cost under $10, but saved me so much time in scrubbing. 

Don’t spend extra time mopping floors or scrubbing showers. If you use the right tool, you can quickly remove soap scum or hard-to-remove sticky spots on the floor quickly. You’ll laugh at your old self who use to sit and scrub sticky residue from floors or windows when all it took was a razor blade and a wipe to remove it. 

This blog post would be too long to get into all the tools that I used to help me and my cleaning business clean more houses in a day. I wrote a blog post on speed cleaning tools and how they can help you clean more houses. 

Step 5: Use an Apron

Using a cleaning apron will help you to clean more houses in a day by reducing the amount of time you spend at a client’s home. Similar to speed cleaning tools, using this tool will help you to clean houses faster.

Why use a Cleaning Apron?

Do you set cleaning supplies down and have to go hunt for them? Or do you have to run back to your cleaning caddy to get a tool? How about stuffing your pockets with cleaning towels or garbage you find while cleaning?

All reasons why you should clean with an apron. The number 1 benefit of using a cleaning apron is being able to carry all of your tools with you while you clean.

The Apron also stores extra towels for you to grab when one gets dirty. A good cleaning apron has multiple pockets and pocket sizes so that you can store all sorts of tools. Even use a pocket to place misc trash you may find laying around while cleaning.

What the Cleaning Apron does for you:

1. Keeps all your tools within arm’s reach
2. Eliminates trips to a trash can to throw away trash
3. Eliminates walking in circles looking for misplaced tools
4. No more trips to grab more towels.

The point is to not have to stop cleaning, just to throw something away, grab a clean towel or grab a different cleaner. All of your cleaning supplies and tools will be right with you so that you can clean the space without stopping.

A recap of what you need to do to clean more houses in a day:

1. Proper Scheduling
2. Offering a consistent service
3. Following a consistent cleaning system
4. Using Speed Cleaning Tools
5. Using an Apron

Implementing these 5 tips will help you clean more houses in a day. That means more revenue for your cleaning business.

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