The busiest days of the year for Ryan Knoll is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, followed by the day before Christmas Eve. On those days, business for TidyCasa, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based house cleaning service he started almost 10 years ago, doubles.
“The pre-holiday cleaning overdrive is real,” said Knoll, whose company services about 600 homes a month throughout Phoenix, Tucson and Scottsdale, and employs around 40 workers.
“We get panicked callers. They’re freaking out about their homes not being guest ready. They say, ‘I’m hosting everyone for dinner and want the house pristine.’”
“I call it the clean before the storm,” I said. Panic sets in when we must see (and smell) past our house (and nose) blindness and notice what we haven’t wanted to notice.
“People are already overscheduled, and now they’re worried that their company will think they’re slobs,” he said. Knoll has been there. Before starting his business, he remembers that his job as a busy marketing executive left him cleaning his own place on weekends and doubling down before holidays. “It wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time off.” However, finding a housekeeping service he trusted, that was reliable and that shared his (picky) standards, was next to impossible. “There was always some friction,” he said. “The person would arrive to the interview smelling of cigarettes.”