Homemaid began out of sheer frustration. My husband Thomas and I took a trip to Portland for a Valentine’s Day escape in 2009. On the way home I realized how unsatisfied I was with my job. I’d been working in a bakery downtown at the time. I’d been promoted from a lowly barista to a slightly better “lead” position. I was working 45 hours a week at $10.50 an hour. Most months we could barely pay the rent. It hit me that I’d been working those kinds of empty jobs for years. The only way I’d ever get out was if I was willing to take a risk. We’d been talking about the possibility of being entrepreneurs for a while and I’d often daydream of making my own schedule and creating something from scratch. On February 21st, 2009 we officially became self-employed.
Being bike powered was something that was very important to both Thomas and I from the beginning. I’m somewhat of a novice at biking. At the time of Homemaid’s start, I’d been biking Seattle for a little over a year but had never pulled a weighted trailer, biked long distances, and I had my apprehensions about riding in bad weather. Thomas, on the other hand is an experienced cyclist. After graduating from college, he rode from Santa Cruz, CA up the coast and into Montana. He’s also been working as a bike messenger in Bellevue for close to three years. He was confident that a bike powered business has its place in Seattle and that we could make it work.
So, the idea was there, but putting it into action was something else entirely! The first step was easy: quit my horrible job! The next few were a little more of a challenge. In order to keep calm, we broke everything down into smaller problems. Solve one, move onto the next. Slowly, things started to come together.
The first problem to tackle was money. We looked at our finances and created a timeline of how long we could survive before we ran out of savings. Next, we created a budget for starting the business. Starting costs were all about getting our name out there; mainly graphic design, printing and advertising costs. The next step was acquiring all the tools we'd need to clean. Once everything was set up, we'd have to get our licensing, bonding and insurance taken care of. Then we could start working.
Our graphic designer is a close friend, Marcie McCabe and she’s very talented. She created the logo and really the whole aesthetic appearance of our website. She focused on what we wanted to communicate to our clients and built the design from there. Once we had the design, the business really started to take shape. We printed our cards at Girlie Press on Madison Street. Thomas got our website up quickly with a blog page outlining our services.
During that time, we were also doing a lot of research on the products to clean with and the equipment we’d need to make it all happen. The three big ones were the trailer, the vacuum cleaner, and the cleaning products.
The trailer was a key part of how to make our business work. Initially we started out with a child trailer but the design was all wrong. It was too wide and the shape didn’t accommodate what we needed to haul, plus it felt dangerous in traffic. The trailer we decided on is made by Burley and it’s the perfect size. It’s shoulder width and compact enough to handle long bike rides. Its designed to hold our canister vacuum cleaner on one side and bucket of cleaners on the other, keeping the weight properly balanced.
Miele makes the world’s best vacuum cleaners. Thomas’ mom Michelle has one and I thought it was the coolest thing when I first used it. It’s a canister design and looks like a blue computer mouse on wheels. That design is great for cleaning a wide variety of homes. Every house is different and having a selection of attachments has been a lifesaver!
For the cleaning products, we had a few requirements. They had to be non-toxic, made as locally as possible, and preferably available in bulk. We started with Bio-Kleen. They operate out of Vancouver and most of the cleaning products are concentrated. After a few months of cleaning, we started buying from a small operation in Ballard. The main issue I had with Bio-Kleen is all the plastic we waste from using it. It’s concentrated but they don’t come in big, reusable jugs like what we get from Max and Molly’s General Store. Barrie Arliss runs this small business from her home and sells us non-toxic cleaners that are homemade and stored in reusable glass jugs. We can give her feedback if we experience any issues and she invoices electronically, just like us!
We’ve all grown up with the belief that for something to be “clean” its got to be doused in chemicals and sterilized. This is really not true. All of the cleaning products I use have about 80% water to 20% cleaning fluid in the bottle. The cleaners are made from vinegar, citrus oils, coconut oils, and for the heavy scrubbing, baking soda, borax and dish soap. There are many natural degreasers that can cut through the worst baked on mess without slowly killing us!
So, that is my introduction to how we started our business. We learned a lot of stuff by trial and error. I will get into that at a time when I really feel like blowing off steam, mostly because it's a frustrating and tedious process that every business owner goes through. Every day.
Best,
Laurel
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