By Charity Lovelace

I clean vacant apartments, getting them ready for the new tenants. I started this business with less than $100.00, for cleaning supplies and liability insurance. I bought my 1st vacuum at a yard sale for $10.00.

I made up a flyer on the computer, picked up a few apartment guides for my city and faxed everyone a copy of the flyer. Or I called them on the phone and asked if they needed cleaners, usually they will ask you to send them a flyer for future references, if they don't need anyone at the moment.

The way we priced them is just being honest with the maintenance managers, we told them we didn't know how to really price them, and they gave us a ballpark figure that fit their budgets, and we negotiated from there. The average that we get for our city is $55.00 for a one bedroom, $65.00 for a 2 bedroom 2 bath, and we charge extra if the ovens are bad, or the tubs are bad.

We do not really use a lot of different cleaning supplies, Windex, greased lightening, pine sol , soft scrub with bleach, oven cleaner (we use it in the bottom of the tubs too) floor wax , baby oil for the sinks(to make them shine) . We have SOS pads, a scrub brush, a toilet bowl brush, scrubbies, and a lot of rags that we get at the auto parts stores, broom, dustpan. A Webster for the ceiling fans, and our vacuum.

There is 2 of us, and we can usually do an apartment in about an hour, sometimes 1 1/2 hours. We mop the floors, we clean the bathrooms, clean the inside of the windows, the kitchens, the stoves, refrigerators, wipe out the cabinets and wipe off the front of the cabinets. If you do it by yourself, it will probably take a little over 2 hours to do an apartment.

We have been doing this over a year, and usually each make about $500.00 + a week, and we work about 25 hours a week.

The best thing is usually anything is left in the apartments is yours to keep, so once a year we have a great yard sale.