Our guarantee is there will NEVER be anyone in your home that can not pass a criminal background check.
What the heck happened to Debi Does Houses? Debi and I worked under that name for the first 5 plus years of the business. We had a great billboard kind of a car that became pretty well known around Longview. Our clients just loved the name Debi Does Houses. However, there is/was a segment of our population that did not appreciate the humor of Debi Does Houses. We are fine with that. We realize there are people that may or may not want people to know they have cleaners. There are also people that just does not want everybody knowing they found the name "funny". Again, we understand. We felt long term the best thing would be NOT to alienate any potential clients.
We have since changed the name to Debi Cleans Houses and have chosen to start servicing out of a small silver car. While this may not grab the attention of people (and as many clients) as the red car with yellow letters it is better suited for this area. So if you have a high end luxury property do not fear that red and yellow car will be sitting in your drive way.
Why do you need 3 or 4 people in my home to clean it? Debi and I worked for years as a 2 person ownership/operation team. This was great until recently. We did a audit and realized that we had passed on a great deal of jobs during the passed several years. Honestly, thousands and thousands of dollars in deep cleanings. We have passed on over 100 of these cleanings since 2014. Working as a 4 person team not only makes us much more efficient in your home. It allows us to do some little extras. It also prevents new clients from having to wait for a spot to come open in order to get their home cleaned. As a 2 person team the average basic 2400 square foot recurring cleaning was taking 2.5-3 hours. With 3 persons it will be down to 1 hour and 45 minutes or less. With 4 persons down to near a hour. And yes this is plenty of time to continue the strong quality cleanings we have always done. It also allows us to be able to be much more efficient in larger homes or with deep cleanings. The fact is we were basically closed to new business until expanding our team. We will continue to be involved in each cleaning that is done by DCH. But, we will begin to loosen the reigns on the labor being performed ourselves. Debi and I have over 3,000 happy cleans under our belt. However, as we age cleaning is getting much harder. It is time to train some worthy people to start handling these cleans for us. Our ladies may actually perform all labor (saves the tread on our feet and gets them some more hours) in your home and we may supervise the cleaning as well. There are various forms that our labor will be done in. Again, keeping a eye toward our long term business future. Our goal is to always quality evaluate every cleaning. The franchises can not offer you that! Each cleaning has 5 major components. Kitchen, Master Bathroom, Dusting, Vacuuming, and Mopping. To a lesser extent a smaller extra bathroom or two. I used to clean bathrooms and start floors. Debi handled dusting and kitchen. Then also started floors. Now we can spread each duty out among 3 or 4 people. This makes every thing much more efficient. Fact is we are the number 1 Longview, Tyler, White Oak, Kilgore, Hallsville House Cleaning Service. But, as 2 people we were turning down almost all deep cleans since the first of 2014. Now we can handle most work that will be handed to us. As always no criminal elements will ever be involved with a DCH cleaning.
Payment Options - Cash, Pay Pal or Check Please. Cash must be either left on the counter or handed to us PRIOR to starting any one time cleans. We do not accept any checks on one time cleans. We also do Pay Pal invoicing payments so you may use a debit or credit card. However, Pay Pal must be paid prior to the cleans starting. And it must be paid in a manner that will allow the payment to reach our bank. Our business has been scammed through Pay Pal prior by clients that were dishonest and wanted a free cleaning. Large One Time deep cleans may be paid for with debit or credit card through Pay Pal as well. Again, the payment must have been allowed to process into our bank before we will begin your cleaning. Again, we do not charge what Merry Maids does. They average about $800 for a 2400 square foot deep cleaning. We charge about $350-$450 for the same cleaning. There are some small trade offs in order for us to be able to keep rates reasonable. No Cashiers Checks under any circumstances.
What kind of cleaning products do you use? Bona, Oxy Clean Stain Fighters, AJAX, Professional Pine Sol, Rubbermaid Commercial Professional Mops, Mr. Clean Microfiber Dry/Wet Mops,Oreck Pro Vacs. We also use specific stain steel cleaners as well.
Can you use my cleaning products? Yes, but, I'll charge you a little more. You may be thinking wait for using my stuff? Yes. The reason is simple. The entire first year of being in business was through trial and error finding out what works best and in the most efficient way. For example Kaboom is THE BEST shower and tub cleaner. But, the smell can be "loud". It saves me probably 10 minutes alone on a tub vs. other tub cleaning products. Scrubbing Bubbles CAN NOT touch Kaboom. Again, trial and error. If you want us to use your mop vs. our professional Libman's or Rubbermaid mops that work great it is going to take us longer. And I will not guarantee that floor. Why? Because we clean using a system based around certain equipment and products. Most vacs including Dyson's can not touch ours. Again, through trial and error. I have a $200 Hoover sitting in my apartment that is not worth a penny on hard surface but, my Oreck and Shark is.
Where does your pricing come from? I take a couple different things into account when setting prices. 1) People are beginning to be willing to pay more for smaller homes vs. larger ones. It is not uncommon to book a 1500 square foot home for $85 every other week as of June 2017. This is a 1 hour and 15 minute cleaning with 3 people. So no your 2500 square foot house is not going to be $85. But, it is not going to be $250, $280, $300 every other week like the franchises or couple of the other local businesses. 2) I look at the traffic in your home and the where the home physically sets. If you have 3 kids and 3 large dogs and 3 bathrooms and you live in the country on red clay dirt/sand then of course your home will be more than the office working couple with no kids and 2 indoor cats setting in a manicured subdivision in town. Why? Because there is a 3-5 man hours difference in the cleaning time. EVEN if the square footage is EXACTLY the same.
What about Pets? - This is really our special area of expertise. We love pets. Both of us are avid dog and cat lovers. We consider them part of the family. However, we do require that some large breed dogs be crated when we are performing services on your house (so we can move freely and things like vacuums can spook animals). We can not guarantee removal of all the pet hair or cat litter (if the cats are in the house during the clean). We can vacuum a area and have it clean but, furry little guys and girls can still track after the fact. In fact we own a pet sitting business in Longview. We rescue animals and have a slew of cats and 2 great dogs. Including a 10 year old rescue Shiz Tsu named Rowdy. He's daddy's baby. :) We have vacuums that are fantastic at grabbing pet hair. We have mopping techniques for tile that we have developed that is just fantastic at getting pet hair.
Is having a residential cleaner only for rich or the extremely wealthy? No. Many clients are just two income homes where people are busy. They have personal activities, school functions, and just simply want their time back. The average 2000 square foot home takes 2 cleaners about 2 hours to clean. That is 4 hours for 1 person every two weeks just to maintain. That means a half of a Saturday is gone. Or a half of Sunday. Or a hour a day 4 days a week when you just want to rest after working hard. And that's just a basic maintain cleaning. If the home has got a little behind that could balloon to 5, 6, 7, 8 straight hours of cleaning just to "catch up".
What is a initial cleaning fee? A initial cleaning is still considered a basic cleaning. Which means we still do ONLY the items listed under basic cleaning (it is NOT a deep cleaning). However, in most homes even the basic cleaning items may have not been cleaned in quite some time. Months in most cases. So it requires a deeper shower cleaning, toilet work, floor catch up, heavier dusting, stove tops require more work. This takes considerably longer than what your normal cleans will take. Generally 1.5-2 times longer.
Service Areas - We currently service homes in Longview, Pine Tree, Harleton, Hallsville, Liberty City, Kilgore. We are also looking to supplement Longview area homes with Tyler area homes. So if you have a home needing professional cleaners in Tyler, Whitehouse, Flint, and Bullard. Put in a quote and we will try to work a schedule for you.
Why do a walk through before the final quote? - It is the safest way to know what to expect from a house or office. It eliminates any confusion from both you the client and us the provider of service. Also, it gives you a opportunity to become familiar with us and allows you the freedom of choosing to allow us in your home for our service. If you have pets its easier for them to be familiar with us prior to our first clean as well. Also, it allows us to realize whether a potential client is a good fit for us as well. We realize this sounds strange. But, we specialize generally in houses that are generally extensively dirty and have high traffic. Particularly, from pets.
What is a basic functional maintain cleaning? The core of our business is built around recurring basic cleans. They help get busy homes from week to week in their everyday life. That said they are not "perfect cleans". And we do not attempt to sell perfection. We just sell great week to week cleans that help you keep your home and life in line with your schedule. If a home is 20 years old and need grout work. Or has hard water stains from the first Bush Administration likely that is not coming clean either. Cleaner maybe. Perfect. No. Please do not let any cleaner tell you or sell you otherwise. You will just drop them. We offer cleaning not restoration.
Where is the 100% guarantee?
Quite simply we do not offer one. While this sounds harsh we have to be completely honest. The job is simply too labor intensive to offer one. We have had all of 5 complaints in 5 years. However, franchises can offer these guarantees because they charge so much more than we do. So they can afford to eat the labor of the cleaning. We can not. So if you want to pay $250 for a 2000 square foot every other week cleaning in order to get a 100% guarantee then absolutely do so. That said. Any client that has legitimate concerns or needs more attention in certain areas need only to talk to us about it. We may come back and re-clean the area that is deemed not clean enough (provided it is not a restoration issue). We also do not give a discount for the initial cleaning even for recurring clients. Why? Because unfortunately clients will take advantage of us by saying they want recurring service when all they really wanted was a "catch up" but, did not want to pay the "one time cleaning rate". So they disguise their needs in saying they want to be a recurring client. So no longer do we give that 20% less initial cleaning vs. a one time cleaning. They are one and the same now. Recurring cleans are of course discounted based on how often you want to clean after the first cleaning. We believe there it is no accident that we have nearly a 100% client retention rate for clients that are either home while we clean or come around at times during cleans. It is proof of the hard work that is put into their home. And we are able to communicate about their homes. Communication is the number 1 thing we want to have with clients. Some clients believe they should not have to "waste" their time communicating with us. That said these folks tend to have a revolving door of cleaners in and out of their homes. If we choose to take a cleaning sight unseen we reserve the right to turn down the quote and home on the spot. No exceptions.
Why do you not offer window washing or clutter removal? We realize this can be a big one for some people. However, we are not professional window washers. Our issue is simple. Windows take time. And let's be honest. If you wash the inside and not the outside how good is the finished product. That said there are some homes where we may wash the back door and front door windows if they are in the doors themselves. I will also do the outside of them. Now, we do have one house where we do wash the windows as a "side project". And I charge about half rate versus actual window washers. So it is something we can talk about. If you do a deep cleaning we may be able to work them into the cleaning.
Clutter is extremely time consuming. Unfortunately, we have had to let homes go because they could not de-clutter the home for their cleaning. It can run up time so quickly. 15 minutes for us rounds up the charge of a home. When we started the business I talked to a couple former home cleaning business owners. They said not being steadfast on a clutter rule may have ultimately put them out of business. Because they just gave away from labor. Everything can be discussed. If you have a home and in all honesty you are willing to pay for the time to de-clutter it prior to cleaning. And if I can find help for the home. We will take it. So we will never out and out turn away any home over clutter or windows if we can make it fit into the business model. We would most surely rather have a home versus not having it. The franchises can offer some packing, clutter removal etc. Why? Because they can come in with 4-5 people. And charge you $80 per hour. To us that seems excessive. But, if you are willing to pay for it then we will take it.