The reason I am telling you this is that it’s just wrong that the window cleaner was at the beach while YOU were cleaning your own windows! That doesn’t mean that I would have been at your house on a Saturday (I don’t work Saturdays or Sundays.), but it does mean that we could have gotten this squared away during the week.

Next time they need to be done, give me a call at 352-870-8808!

A bright house like this is a joy to behold, unless it is marred by mold and pollen stains. This is one of my completed works from last week. It also had 24 solar panels on top of the roof that were covered with baked on pollen. It was just like cleaning windows! And now those panels can generate electricity more effectively.

1. My son, Donnie, has moved to Chattanooga, TN with his wife, Danielle. He’s been working for me for the past 3 years or so, and I will miss him terribly. Some of you, who saw him grow up as he worked for me periodically since he was a little boy, might miss him, too. He will only be back for periodic visits, but Gainesville will no longer be his home…at least that’s what I think.
2. I will not be hiring a replacement. Most of the time, this will make little difference to you. However, during peak seasons (April/May and October-December), this will mean that I will not be caught up with demand like I have the past few years. You will have to think ahead, and I will fill up my schedule sooner. It’ll be like old times!
3. I will not be running for office again. I say this here because so many of you ask. It is way too big a disruption of my business to be a candidate. I estimate that it cost me about $40K since 2010 to make sure that people have a choice. And if 83-88% of Gainesville voters don’t care enough to vote, why should I make this sacrifice? It’s someone else’s turn.

I hope you had a great holiday season and that you all have a very prosperous new year!

Sincerely,

Don Marsh

Some of you may remember the days when I would be booked til the end of the year by Halloween. Well, when you have help, you stay caught up. Therefore, I still have time to power wash your house and pavement and clean your windows!

Last Thursday, I was running an errand at the end of the day and my van blew its engine. It’s bad enough that I am slammed and I already have a hard time getting to all the estimates I have to give. Now this! Hang in there…

I am not in this picture, nor is anyone I know, but this is where I spent last Wednesday. It was delightful, as was the rest of our cruise, but now I am back and ready for fall weather! And that means it’s time for a lot of cleaning as we prepare to party on football weekends, and look forward to the holidays. Pick a date now, cuz I am usually booked up for Thanksgiving and beyond!

One good thing about an economic collapse is that it causes you to reassess decisions you have made to provide for your family and your future. Back in 1981, during that recession, I was unemployed, with no education or skillset to market, and I knew I had failed to plan. Going back to school did not seem like an option, and I lived in an area where there were no big employers of blue-collar labor, so I started a business.

My first customers were small shops where I was confident that the owners would part with 2-5 dollars per visit to keep their windows cleaned. I found enough of these jobs to eke out a living, but it all changed when I discovered the market of upscale homeowners. These people paid well for my service. And even though I only saw them once or twice per year, there were so many of them that I managed to stay busy and increase my earnings. But then it got better.

These same homeowners sometime put me off by saying that they needed to get the house power washed first. That was when I started to offer power washing to my clients. Now, instead of making $5 at a single location, I was making over $300. I also noticed that a smaller and smaller percentage of my business was small homes. And that is what brings me to the real meaning of all of this: that maintenance adds to wealth.

Here in America there is so much wealth in our economy that we have the luxury of wasting it. We buy stuff that lasts only a year or two. Or less. We replace things that are out of fashion, even though they are still perfectly serviceable. And we let things fall into disrepair. At least, that is what we do if we are not rich. Rich people know better. And when I say rich, I don’t mean that they make a lot of money. I mean that they have accumulated a lot of money and would have a hard time spending it all because they are so frugal.

I am definitely not one of those people. But I have observed a lot of them from time to time. I’ve also met people who make a lot of money, and live in big homes, but are not rich. Or their riches are so precarious that a slight dip in real estate prices can totally liquidate them.

When I was in high school, my best friend was from a rich family, although you would never know it by looking at him.  He had a car, but it was a beat up Plymouth Duster. His dad had died on a cruise ship off the coast of Newfoundland during a storm, when they couldn’t get into port and get him to a hospital. He lived with his mother, who also drove an old car and lived in a modest two-story house on a mountain. I went shopping with them a couple of times, and she knew the price of everything, and could tell when things were marked up just a few cents from the last time she’d been there. Then she would root though the boxes of Cheezits looking for the one that had been missed in the repricing. I just thought she was cheap. But nothing she had was in disrepair. She made everything last.

That is what many of my customers are like; not all, but many. They keep their houses cleaned and repaired because they value them for the long term. Others are in and out of their houses as soon as they can make a profit on them. And now some of them have lost this expensive game of musical chairs by being stuck in something they cannot really afford to maintain. But if they don’t, they will find that their houses are worth less and less in a competitive real estate market that is advantageous to buyers.

The next time you drive by a house with small trees growing out of the rain gutters, and black mold on the walls, and evidience of woodpeckers seeking out the larvae that lives in their wood, remember that this is not a likely customer. It is more likely to be a future real estate bargain for someone wiser who will begin to add value and accumulate wealth.

I pay a lot of attention to our tropical storm situations and it seems that every year there is a prevailing pattern. One year we get a lot of them. Another year it’s the Carolinas. Another, the Yucatan peninsula. So far, it seems like the storms have a bent toward the North, and our latest threat seems to be following that pattern. Maria is projected to hook North, and the prognosticators have been pretty good at this of late. And that is why I am not sweating my upcoming cruise to the Bahamas. We will be celebrating my wife’s birthday at sea this September 26-29, and I am confident that there will be no threats of the meteorological kind.

My son will be taking up the slack, so if you need to get any window cleaning or power washing done that week, I will be forwarding my calls to him. Adios!

After being skeptical for many years, I have finally decided to get the spot-free water system that allows me to clean windows without a squeegee. I have been a long time doubter, but now I have seen and I do believe. Yes, there is a trick to it, but I did a job today that had a lot of large windows and they looked great afterward! Of course, you cannot clean the inside windows this way, but this is progress!