The COVID 19 pandemic marked a before and an after for many people, and not all of them in a good way. Promising careers were truncated, people descended into bad mental health spirals, lives were irrevocably changed because of a global phenomenon out of our control But there are some people that decided to make the most of the bad situation and took the derailment as a blessing in disguise. One of those people is Charlotte Bosanquet, who had to make a living after her career was compromised.
She started doing deep cleans, and while most people think of those as a once a year thing that they do to their already semi clean house to reach all the nooks and crannies that they might have missed in their weekly pass, that is not what she specializes in.
There are plenty of people who, for whatever reason, physical, mental or emotional, just cannot clean their homes. The situation spirals out of control and before they know it, they have ended up with a house full of filth, dirty laundry piles that they never get to, rotten food and molded rooms. For those who have never struggled with mental health or physical issues, it can be very easy to look at the situation and say “just start” but it can feel absolutely overwhelming and shameful, so asking for help is even harder than it should be.
The service that Charlotte Bosanquet provides
To quote her, she tackles spaces that are piled with trash, layers of grime, overwhelmingly dirty spaces, homes in extreme conditions and in desperate need of not just a clean, but a complete treatment to disinfect every single surface and potentially throw away all the linens. “I always say, the dirtier the better.”
And since these types of services are not common at all, as not many people want to perform them, they are a health hazard and can get you sick without the proper equipment to guarantee personal safety, just a week after she opened up her company, called Care Cleaning Agency, she already had hundreds of requests to clean homes in extreme conditions. Based in Sydney, the now 21 year old has managed to grow this business in a very sustainable fashion. She now employs nine people and only works five hours a day.
She explains “It’s harder than going to college full-time, at least for me. In the end, cleaning makes more money than a regular 9-to-5. I know it’s not for everyone—not everyone wants to scrub toilets—but I find it incredibly rewarding.”
While her success is obviously due to her hard work, it might also have a lot to do with her innate compassion and want to serve. After all, before the global event, she had a full time job and was studying to become a police officer, but she had to put those dreams aside to survive and came up with this service. This forced change in lifestyle revealed how fulfilling it was for her to take rundown, cluttered spaces and turn them into clean, functional homes.
Her schedule now runs five hours a day, Monday through Friday, with weekends to herself and she can bring in as much as $9,700 each month. While she acknowledges the stigma often attached to cleaning work, she emphasizes that it is one of the most demanding, and rewarding, jobs she has ever done, especially considering the specific cleaning service that she provides and the people whose lives she affects.
If you are in need of this service or a similar one, remember there is no stigma in asking for help. We all go through tough times in life and we need others to support us.