Marsh Window Cleaning

If you have known me for very long, you know that I have been politically active for the past 10 years. One day I realized that I had not been a very good citizen and I started getting involved in our system of self-government. Well, one thing has led to another, and now I find our city government so unresponsive and out of control that I just had to do something about it. But I cannot do it alone! I really need your help.

Contrary to what some people think, I have not become independently wealthy in the window cleaning business. One of the downsides of conscientiously pricing one’s service so that a relatively broad spectrum of society can afford it is that I cannot crusade against government obtuseness on my own dime. It costs a lot of money to run a city-wide campaign, but if all my friends just do a little bit, the voters can be that much better informed.

Find my campaign site at DonaldMarsh.com and please give a donation by using the PayPal button. I would greatly appreciate your help, and you will be expanding your own influence!

If I am elected, how will this effect my business? Obviously, it will curtail my window cleaning significantly. But my son is still in the business and we will no doubt be hiring someone. But some of you will have the unique experience of having the Mayor of Gainesville clean your windows!

I heard about this on the Slate Political Gabfest, and went and checked it out. Here it is from the Red Cross web site:

12:30am (1/13/2010) You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti.

It’s a quick, easy way to kick in a little cash to help while you are thinking about it. It will be charged to your cell phone bill and can do it up to 3 times for a $30 limit. After sending the text, you will get a confirmation text to which you can reply “yes” and then two more that are just informational. Now you know.

Although we can appreciate people not wanting me to be cold outside, we really do want to work! As I’ve always said, “It’s never too cold to pay the bills!”

To us, cold is just another obstacle, like this palm tree and metal roof that makes it hard to clean the window in the picture above. We come to overcome it so you don’t have to!

So, whether you are putting your house on the market, are hosting a special event, or just cannot stand looking out the windows any longer, remember that dirt doesn’t take the day off. We need to take it off. Give me a call at 352-870-8808!

I just got back from Atlanta, where we celebrated by daughter’s birthday with a trip to the Georgia Aquarium. I really needed the time off. I was definitely suffering from window cleaning burnout. I still have openings before Christmas and New Years Day. Please feel free to call and if you are a new customer, please leave an address. It’s a lot easier to go see a job if I am already in the neighborhood that day than to miss that opportunity and not be back there for a week or two just for an estimate. This is our busiest time, and my first priority is jobs that I have done before. I don’t have to go see them and give an estimate and bid on them, and then schedule the job. I already know how much they are, how long they will take and where they are. Crisscrossing town to give estimates takes too long during Prime Time!

If you are calling me to get your windows cleaned, and you find it takes a day or two for me to get back to you, here are a few reasons why that might be:

This is our busiest time of year, and I have to call people back at night. We don’t have a dedicated secretary, nor a person who does nothing but give estimates. I wear almost all the hats, and when I get home and have 17 messages, I may only get through the list once.

If you are a new customer, you are a lower priority than existing customers because I don’t have to go out to see those jobs. I call them, we pick a day, and that’s that. If you didn’t leave your address on the voicemail, I will have to catch you just to get that information. People who have left me an address are my second priority.

I may have gotten a busy signal or you have no messaging system and I called while you were not home. This happens more often than you may think. Sometimes voicemail boxes are full and will no take my message.

I apologize for the times I cannot get back to you right away. I can only do so much. If you are a long time customer, you may recall that as recently as a few years ago, I was usually booked solid until the end of the year by now. Since my son, Donnie, is working with me again, we can usually get to you within a week. So don’t give up!

This year we had a pretty good summer, in spite of the continuing lousy real estate market and sluggish economy in general. And now we are seeing the release of pent-up demand from last year and this spring. The calls and emails are coming fast and furious! It’s been hard to keep up with it, even though there are now two of us! So, if you want done for the holidays, please find a date NOW! It is not unusual for me to have to turn clients away during the holiday season…

I already know that some of my customers will use Facebook and Plaxo. I have friended a few on both networks. But what about a social networking site that caters particularly to service recommendations?

Years ago I created a rudimentary site that was intended to serve this purpose. Anyone could fill out a form and recommend a painter, dentist, electrician, etc. It was a flop, but it was pretty primitive. Recently I found a site that seems to fulfill my ideals, except the end user (customer) can also invite their friends to share their recommendations with them! It costs nothing to do this, unless you own a business and you want a Pro account.

At any rate, it is called GigPark.com, and if you are a local visitor to my site and you are investigating various local services, you might want to check it out and join it! Here’s the link to my page on Gigpark.

Summers are traditionally crumby for me because so many of my customers are out of town on vacation. And since this is the home of the Florida Gators, they are waiting for the first football party to serve as the incentive for a major house cleaning. But this summer has actually been pretty good. We picked up a lot of new customers, and people are getting more things done since we offer so many pressure washing services now.

If you are still putting off you window cleaning, you still might get a lot of your pressure washing out of the way now. After all, as the holidays get closer, it may be harder to squeeze in big projects during that season’s rush. And a big part of that should be getting your rain gutters cleaned out. There is still some wet weather ahead, and those gutters had better be able to keep the heavy downpours from filling them up and backing up under your shingles! I should know. It’s happened to me.

We spent last week at Miami Beach to recharge our batteries. I had never been there before, and we really enjoyed the local scene. Of course, that is when so many people returned my phone calls and emails from many days gone by. I hope you are still in need of window cleaning, cuz we are ready to get back to work!

Don’t get the wrong idea. Gutter cleaning is a very small part of my business. But I am doing more of it and I am learning from observing. After cleaning out someone’s gutters, I sometimes discover that they still don’t drain. Sometimes it’s because the downspouts have turns and bends that make it hard for debris to be passed through the system. For instance, this gutter was just cleaned out by the owners. However, water still won’t go down! Then it overruns the sides of the gutter like a waterfall.

In this case, I believe the horizontal downspout is full of debris to a level that impedes the water flow. In other cases, I have seen downspouts that are buried in the ground, making it difficult to clean it out.