Hi there, I'm Angela Brown in this is Ask a House Cleaner
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Today's question comes from a woman business owner who runs a cleaning company and she
also goes to church on Sunday.
And her church group is getting together as a special project and they're going to go
inside one of the members' homes and they're going to clean up her hoarding problem.
Now the woman wants to know "I've been put in charge of the project and as the person
in charge of the project.
I am curious to know none of the people that are going to be volunteers are bonded
and insured to do this project. And number two,
none of them have been trained as professional house cleaners.
So what do you recommend that I do as far as managing this project?"
Alright, well that is an awesome question and we'll see
what we can do here as far as an answer.
Now as the person that's in charge and the manager of this project,
you're not being hired as a home business owner (the home cleaning business owner)
you've been volunteered by the church to do this project.
I'm guessing there's no money involved.
And if that's the case anything that malfunctions on this job is going to be back on the church.
Not on you as a house cleaning business owner.
And so as far as being bonded and insured.
You know hey that's not really your responsibility, and most Church projects don't have something
like that in place where they have people sign a form.
But you can show up and have a waiver just a blank waiver this is we're not holding the
homeowner responsible if we fall and get hurt.
And the homeowner signs something that says
"I'm not going to sue anybody if damage is done to my home."
So there's just a blank waiver that releases everyone from any harm or damage.
And it lets you know (and they're signing to it) they are a volunteer on this project.
Okay, so that way nobody gets sued if something happens.
Okay, so the next thing about this project is because of the nature of hoarding,
there is going to have to be some tough love.
Now, what you have to recognizing going in, is that you are not here
to rescue this person.
When you leave, the situation is just going to duplicate itself.
Because that is the comfort zone of the person who lives there.
And so what you're doing in this particular moment is you're just
getting out some of the clutter.
They're going to get rid of some of it so that there's room for more to come in.
That's all you're doing.
Unless this person is at a place of changing in their life
and they're going to use this as a stepping stone
to change all of their future behaviors,
there's really not a lot you're going to be able to change.
So don't make ongoing commitments that you're going to go back and keep re-cleaning this
person's house.
So it is lovely that the church group has decided they're going to help this woman out
but you need to be very crystal clear about what it is you're doing.
Alright, so when you decide that you're going to do this project
you need to set a specific date.
Like Saturday morning from 9 until 12.
And put a start time on it and put a finish time on it.
Because you just don't want the members of the church showing up randomly through the
morning and you don't want the project to continue on all day.
Because the truth is even with eight or ten volunteers it can probably
take a couple of days,
and so there needs to be a start time and a stop time.
One of the members of the church if they have a van we would like them to bring the van
or even better yet let's rent a U-Haul Van for twenty bucks plus the mileage that day.
Now the church may want to kick in on that, maybe some of the members of the church want
to kick in on that, maybe the homeowner wants to pay for that.
I don't know where that money comes from but for 20 bucks you can get a great big van and
you just pay for the mileage and the gasoline.
So you show up with the van at 9 on a Saturday morning and you want to make sure that all
of your volunteers meet you precisely at 9 you only have 3 hours.
And so then what you do is you put a different volunteer in front of each pile.
And so you say, okay you are in charge of the trash pile.
Any trash that we find you're in charge of the trash pile.
And that person will delegate chores to other volunteers.
The next person you want to put in front of the donate pile.
There may be a pile that goes to the Goodwill or the Salvation Army or another donation
or charitable organization.
Maybe even the church.
So these are items that the family no longer uses that still has some life left in them
that are still in good, like new, great condition, or whatever
but you just want to get rid of them.
Okay, and then there's going to be a pile that is for consignment.
And I'm not talking about eBay because people that are hoarders don't have time to go online
and sell stuff on eBay.
So we don't want to create any more responsibilities for this family.
A consignment store will take the stuff, "yes or no" if they don't take it, it goes to
the dump.
And so you want to have a consignment pile.
A toss pile of garbage.
A recycle pile which it then goes to the Goodwill or the Salvation Army.
And then you want to have a pile of stuff that they're going to keep.
These are their clothes and their shoes and their books and their dishes and things that
are going to stay inside that house.
And you want to put a volunteer in charge of each of those elements.
And that way you delegate something to them, they delegated on to the other volunteers.
Now, you as the manager needs to be the person face-to-face with the customer
(and I say the customer) the member of the church.
And there only needs to be one person face-to-face.
Because if there are 15 people asking the homeowner questions the homeowner is going
to become very overwhelmed.
And we don't want that.
We want to get as much work done as quickly as possible.
So you are the go between the homeowner and all of the volunteers.
And your job for this day is to show up either with the van
or assign somebody to bring the van.
You show up you're going to give everybody a pile, and then you are going to talk to
the homeowner.
And as you talk to the homeowner you just pick up an item.
Keep?
Toss?
Donate?
Or save?
And those are your for choices.
Don't give her five choices, don't give her seven choices.
It goes in one of those four piles.
Now, might take her a few minutes to kind of get in the routine of giving up things
because hoarders love their things.
And there's an emotional attachment to things I don't know why.
But people will save cottage cheese containers.
And they're going to make some art or craft out of it or something like that.
So there's an emotional attachment to that item, but right now for today you only have
3 hours of time.
"There will be more cottage cheese containers in the future.
So let's get rid of this one today.
You're not going to make your arts and crafts project today.
So let's get rid of that today" and she says "Oh yeah, that's true.
There will be more cottage cheese containers in the future."
Then get rid of that that goes to the garbage pile.
So, the easier and the quicker you can help her move on from those items and disperse
those to the four different piles the quicker your job can be.
Now, when the project is done (and it's not going to be done) you can only make a dent.
You can only go as far as you can go in until noon.
And I'm not, I'm asking that you not stretch it out all the way through the day.
Do not make this an all Saturday project.
It's going to wear out all of the volunteers.
And it's going to wear out the homeowner.
This is an exhausting project.
And so three hours is about max.
That keeps everybody fresh.
Everybody feels good about the project and if in the future there's another project like
this the volunteers will come back.
But if you burn them out on this project they're not coming back for the next project
whatever that is.
At the end of the 12-hour, at the end of... at 12:00 o'clock, at the end of the three hours,
everyone needs to be thanked for their work.
High-fives to everybody.
"Great job" to the homeowner for getting rid of the stuff.
Give her a word of encouragement and then all of you leave.
Don't hang out.
Don't sit there and play therapist.
Don't try to help her overcome her hoarding addiction.
Because there is so much more to hoarding than just having a church group come in clear
out all the clutter and then suddenly you're cured.
There's a lifetime of issues going on that is buried in that stuff.
And so without dealing with that properly, there's no way that even a church group with
10 or 12 or 15 volunteers are going to be able to come in and restore that home back
to a living space that's really desirable to live in.
Because that person in their head still has those hoarding tendencies.
So as soon as you've cleared out space,
they're going to bring a whole bunch more stuff back in.
But at least I might be newer stuff and, newer stuff, and might be fresher stuff,
and it might not be as contaminated or whatever this environment is
that your church feels you need to clean up.
Anyway, a charitable project is really kind of you guys.
And that's all it is.
It's just a charitable project.
And so don't try to go in and rescue anyone.
You have your own family to go home and rescue and take care of.
So just keep that in mind, and God bless you.
This is a lovely gesture from you and all of your church members.
Alrighty, so that's it for today.
And until we meet again
Leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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