I washed my first window in 1979 at age 9 in an office building where my step-grandparents were cleaning for their son, my mother’s ex-husband, whose flashy, decadent ways captured my imagination as a child. I remember making a big smeary streaky mess with some towels and a bottle of blue spray. when I was done it didn’t look that great. Discouraged I went back to life of boyhood. At 11 I got my f
irst paper route delivering The Columbian to some low income apartments in Vancouver, Washington. This pretty much established my entrepreneurial spirit. At 15 I quit the paper route and mowed lawns for the summer. At 16 I took a job cleaning a 40,000 square foot office in suburban Oregon. And then when school started back up, I cleaned floors in the local Kmart early in the morning before class. Then late in my 17th year I started C&N Janitorial Service in Vancouver WA. The N stood for nobody, because I did it all myself pretty much. At 19 I got the contract to clean the windows for a small real estate office, so I bought some squeegees and a mop and attempted to do the work. Frustration ensued, but a friendly window cleaner happened by and taught me a few techniques that got the ball rolling. Then I washed my parents windows, my grandmas windows and picked up house clients and commercial jobs here and there. When I quit the janitorial racket in the mid 90s and went back to college to get my journalism BA and English minor from Washington State University, I kept my squeegees and would beat the mid-range to nicer residential neighborhoods in Pullman, Washington knocking door to door seeking travel bucks for clean windows. I always found all the work I needed to help pay for school, buy food and pay the rent and travel, and I built a small repeat client base while in college. I’ve been in California now for 12 years and over time I’ve picked up a client here and there from friends and talking with people, 99% residential with second story reach capacity. While I'm focused on cleaning the beautiful homes of the Ojai Valley, I've washed windows in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, New Mexico and a few places in Europe.
