Managing Inventory and Supplies in Your Cleaning Business

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Introduction

Hello everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and in today’s solo episode, I want to go over all things related to managing supplies and inventory, how much you should be spending on supplies and tools for your cleaning business. This was prompted by a great conversation that I saw, I believe in the ZenMaid mastermind or the ZenMaid inner circle. Both of those are Facebook groups, and so I wanted to chime in give my two cents on how we handle these things at Serene Clean.

The Reality of Supply Management

There is a couple different ways that you can go about managing supplies, because obviously, getting an office is not practical for a lot of us starting out, nor is it something we should probably even aspire to. I think that getting an office too early, meaning before you can feasibly afford it, is a recipe for disaster. We did get an office pretty fast at Serene Clean, but that’s because we got a big commercial account very early on, and I was able to find a very affordable, small office right in our little town. But again, prices for commercial can be wildly different, and honestly, if I were to start all over, I may have even held out a little longer, or waited until I could find a place that allowed for washer and dryer hookups.

Who Should Supply Tools and Equipment

When it comes to who’s going to supply it, that is one thing. If you are running independent contractors, then it is the expectation that they supply all of the tools and supplies, because they are their own cleaning business, right? So if you are supplying everything, and you are running them as ICs, that’s a little fuzzy. You are most likely breaking the rules as to what qualifies them as an independent contractor versus a W-2 employee, and you’re blurring the lines there. They should be supplying the tools and supplies if they’re an independent contractor in all correct senses of the word.

So we are going off of the assumption that we are talking about W-2 employees, and you the owner, are providing all of the tools and supplies. So that’s where, you know, building the relationships with either your contractors or your cleaners, and also having those client guidelines and policies where we’ve talked about that before, actually, pretty much every guest has talked about the situation happening, so that, I hope that tells you this is common, so don’t let it break your heart when it happens.

Storage Solutions and Setup Options

If you haven’t even opened your cleaning business yet, and you’re just listening and trying to get your mind wrapped around it, this episode will hopefully clear up some things on how to go about these problems, or really not problems, just the reality of what it is to own a cleaning business, and that if we are running W-2 employees, we should be supplying the tools and supplies.

When I started Serene Clean, it was out of my little apartment, and I literally had a garden tote outside that I would keep stocked in. The cleaning techs would come and get supplies whenever they needed it. For so many reasons this, I wish I did not do this. And honestly, I didn’t think so far into winter of what are you going to do when winter rolls around and stuff starts freezing, or just having people access your house in the winter, all of that. So I definitely did not think very far in advance.

I definitely wish I didn’t have techs know where I lived early on, because I did have some wild people that ideally would not know where I live, and just to have that bit of privacy for sure, and having techs come in and out of my driveway all the time getting supplies there’s just so many reasons that that is not ideal.

Storage Unit Considerations

One of the most often suggested thing to do is going to be having a storage unit. And this can work incredibly beautifully instead of having an office, because one, it creates that separation, and two, it doesn’t really matter when the techs are going in and out. However, some places that do run the storage units are only open during daytime, so that is something to be cognizant of when you’re looking for a unit is making sure that they allow for 24/7 access.

Temperature controlled units are going to be very important. And actually, critical if you are anywhere that it snows or gets below freezing, and honestly, probably not great if it gets super duper hot, either for your tools and supplies really your liquid products to be getting really hot. Living in Wisconsin, our stuff freezes, and we cannot even leave our kits in our cars overnight. Because, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been standing at a sink at the first house thawing my multi purpose or my glass cleaning spray, or any of my liquid products because they’re frozen solid.

That’s a huge problem. Is going to be temperature controlled unit if you’re going to go that route. So that’s the first thing to look at when we’re looking at parameters of what makes a good storage unit. Of course, location is going to be the other big thing is, is this centrally located for the area that you’re servicing, or is it on one side and you’re servicing a really large area? Because remember, it needs to be convenient for your cleaners.

Office Space Benefits and Challenges

The other option, obviously, is going to be having an office, and I got an office early on, and if you are able to find one that’s affordable, a good location, and has all of the amenities that you are looking for that’s great, it’s a great office is well worth it when you are able to afford it. And how do you know if you can afford it? Well, what’s the rent, what’s all of the utilities going to cost, and how much overhead do you have now? Meaning leftover? How much profit do you have left after you pay everything else, pay the people pay yourself. What’s left over is there enough there that you can feasibly afford that and still feel safe and comfortable.

I got a small office, and one of the reasons I chose it was it did not have water hookup, so for washer and dryer, but what it was is located directly across from a laundromat. So for the entirety of the time I had that office, which I think was a year, we would just run our laundry back and forth. So it was definitely an inconvenience, but it could have been more inconvenient, meaning we didn’t have access to even a laundromat, and so maybe having to haul it somewhere else, or hiring a service to deal with the laundry situation.

The Laundry Challenge

Laundry and washing all of our reusable, washable items, so microfiber and mop heads is going to be a huge thing that we need to solve with however we do this. So if you’re going the storage unit route, that’s going to be wildly inconvenient in the manner of you are going to just have to make that part of your routine, or pay somebody else to make it part of their routine. Is that they or you are handling this and making sure that there is enough for the next day or next two days.

We’d constantly be running out of stuff when it came to running it back and forth to the laundry mats, because in the early days when cleaners would keep just so many rags because they don’t want to stop in the office or whatever. So you do need to have some rules of they can’t hoard stuff and not return it, because we have to have enough for the next day of work, or next couple days. So now we have just overbought so heavily on cloths, mop heads, all of that stuff. So we want to just make sure we have enough in stock, so that if there is a bunch of dirty ones, we still have enough to replenish.

Security and Access Management

Security for all of the options is going to be simple. A lot of the units do offer cameras all over the place. And the other thing you’re going to want to do is install cameras yourself inside. One of the things you’re gonna have to watch out for, though, is a lot of cameras are based on being able to run Wi-Fi. So finding a camera that you can hook up that does not need Wi-Fi is going to be challenging.

Managing keys and access is I would highly recommend a digital access tool, whether that be app based, lockbox or something that you can change the codes on yourself, some storage units, again, they handle that part of it. So managing keys is a pain when it comes to staff coming and going, because you’re now trying to make sure everybody has the right keys. And when people are turning over, you’re going to be having to collect keys and make sure that nobody has keys that’s not supposed to, because that is a huge risk to you when it comes to somebody wanting to steal your supplies after the fact.

Team Involvement in Laundry Management

Once we moved to our second office, which was actually right next door, owned by the same landlords, but it had washer and dryer hookups, and so that was a huge reason we literally moved over, and then it was two or three times the size as well, which we really needed. Once we moved over there, it made our lives so much easier, because all of a sudden, if we’re in the office, we’re not having a stop and run back and forth across the street for the laundromat.

The techs can actually help manage this. So now for us, it’s just the expectation, if you are in the office, you are checking laundry, does it need to be turned over? And we just see this as a team thing that you just you keep it going, and this is a collaborative thing. And because we do pay them a prep work time amount every single day that they work, that means that that is when they are restocking their kits, making sure everything is clean, their vacuums cleaned out and maintained, and they are helping with the entirety of keeping up with laundry.

We just really see that as a team thing. Now it’s not just on management, especially now we have three offices, and only one is manned by management, so then in those offices, it is 100% on the cleaning techs to keep up with laundry. So if you think this can’t be done, or they won’t go for it, yeah, they will just make it a policy that this is. But if people are digging their heels in because they’re like, “Well, I’m not getting paid for that,” we’ll pay them then.

Pay them whether, and this could be something where, for us, we just add, I think we’re just adding five or 10 minutes per day that they are scheduled to work, and we just pay them for that time, because that’s plenty of time to do this, and then it’s just being fully fair. We actually timed this out and figured out how much time on average, it would take to replenish your kit, do the quick vacuum maintenance, and then also keep up with any laundry, meaning start a load or put a load in the baskets that it belongs in. And 10 minutes was plenty. So I’m pretty sure we actually do five minutes, because not every day do they even need to do that necessarily.

Fair Compensation for Work Tasks

That has really helped, just with the accountability of if you’re asking them to do something work related, maintain their kits and you’re not paying that. Well, technically, that is illegal. I mean, you need to pay them for everything work related and just, I’m just so against expecting people to do work related things and not pay them. I mean, not just from a legal standpoint, but that’s just a bad boss thing to do. So we just want to make sure that if we’re asking them to do work stuff, pay them for it, because we are the owners this is our job to pay for that.

We want to be fair and really put yourself in your cleaning tech shoes of how would you want to be treated? Or if you’re being asked to do something that’s work related, then you should be paid for that and just teaching and rebuilding healthy work boundaries, because a lot of previous generations have been absolutely downtrodden and used in a lot of ways when it comes to that. So I see it as our responsibility to kind of right the wrongs that we can and just little things like that, of anything work related, they should be getting paid for.

Inventory Management Systems

When you’re looking at how much supplies a cleaning tech is going through. This is where managing the inventory is going to be really critical, and something that we have came up with a pretty good system for and one of the solutions that I saw on that mastermind post was basically having a Google form or Google Sheet or something that the all of your techs have access to, and they fill out when they are running low.

For us, because we just stock the actual office. It’s not like we’re giving things out individually to our techs one on one, or anything like that. We’re going to look at focusing on stocking the office. So that means just paying attention to the office inventory or the storage unit inventory, or your garage inventory, whatever. And so for us, it’s more like as a whole, this one location and this one list of supplies.

What we have done is created basically a supply list of everything that should be in the office we have. And this is literally a printed off sheet so it has the product or tool, and that’s listed down one column, and then the second column is desired amount to have in stock. And that’s going to be like, for example, garbage bag, small, two to four gallon clear. We desire to have 10 rolls. And then the next column over is going to be amount left that prompts ordering. And for that particular one, it’s five rolls. So once it’s hit five rolls, that means we need to reorder to get us up to the 10 rolls amount. And then the final column is going to be the amount to order, and that is where the person fills it out.

Tracking and Ordering Process

What we’re going to do is have these each laminated in each office. Basically in ZenMaid, we assign a cleaning tech that is used to this, or we’ve had the conversation with about inventory and how to do this. It’s very easy. So we have them fill out the laminated sheet every single week. We assign them to office work, and that’s just to do the inventory, basically. And they just snap a picture of their filled out sheet with dry erase, and then they leave it there for the next week. And then we just order based off of that inventory check.

That really allows us to see then what we’re going through a lot, and that will make us see patterns and red flags. And April, who does all of our inventory management, my payroll manager, April, she actually has an entire spreadsheet of how often we’re ordering everything and how much we’re spending each month on every single tool, as well as total amounts. She’s keeping track of all of that, which I know feels like a lot, but it does allow you to see patterns of spending.

Cost Analysis and Budgeting

If there’s any kind of alarm bells that need to go off of “Whoa, we’re going through a ton of this.” Because, remember, it’s removing the feeling out of “Oh, I feel like we’re going through so many garbage bags. I feel like we’re going through so much Bar Keepers,” or whatever the thing is, this way we can see what is normal. And if anybody is going through a ton of stuff, and that could be they’re cleaning improperly, they’re using too much. Maybe they’re at really hard cleans all the time. That could be a thing. So looking at the type of cleanings that they’re at, but then additionally, is there a potential theft? It could absolutely happen. So we just want to be aware of how much we’re going through of our tools and supplies.

Utilizing this really simple inventory management system, has been really great for us. And then we’re just ordering them and getting them shipped to the Black River office, and then we divvy it up, just because if we were to have that stuff delivered directly to the office, then we’re going to have to time deliveries, because the UPS driver couldn’t go inside of it. I guess we could give them a code. I don’t really feel comfortable with that, so not going to do that.

Spending Guidelines and Percentages

How much should we be spending on tools and supplies? What is the average and historically, for Serene Clean for years and years and years, throughout the history of the business, we have been right around that 3% mark. Really, it’s more like two to 4% of revenue is what we’ve spent on tools and supplies. And the reason I’m able to tell you that incredibly accurately is because of bookkeeping, obviously, and proper bookkeeping. I can look back to any given month. I can see exactly what we bought, how much we spent and where, and this allows you to also compare and see are you getting the best price, or can you start comparing to other suppliers and see if we can get a better deal?

Followed by April’s handy dandy spreadsheet that she has. I can see exactly. Let me pull an example, shall we? So July 28 to August 3 of this year, she spent $21.76 on Bar Keepers soft cleanser. She bought $29.96 of glass cloth. So that’s going to be the flat weave cloths that we use. $19.88 on toilet bowl cleaner, because we do use that in commercial accounts, toilet wand refills. $23.98 Microban. I could keep going, but the week total that we had was $297.88 that was not including tax for shipping and handling. So with tax and shipping and handling, $350.22. Miscellaneous, she did have a miscellaneous purchase, which is kind of our unusual things, $87.99 she bought a janitor’s cart for one of our commercial accounts that we needed.

For us, it’s going to be two to 4% of revenue every single month. And from what I saw in the mastermind group that post, that seemed to be what everybody was kind of answering, was in that range. So if you’re drastically higher, there is definitely something to be done or improved upon in order to be able to get you down.

Product Selection and Scalability

If you’re using very bougie or bespoke products, it could be one of the reasons that that is the case, and that’s why, when it comes to scalability, I think a lot of us want to use very specific when I started out, I really had in my mind I was going to use kind of bougie all natural products, and then just realizing that we don’t need a bunch of fancy things or very expensive products in order to get the job done, especially when we’re looking at things like Dawn dish soap or vinegar. They don’t need to be super expensive.

Especially if you’re getting into commercial where you are supplying a lot of disinfectant, you can get it where you can get it in concentrate, and then mix it in really residential too, depending on how you want to go about your cleaning products, you can get things that are concentrate. You get big jugs that you mix it in, and you can just have the little spout. The hard part, then is, if your cleaners need to refill during the day, that gets a little bit more challenging managing it where for us, if they’re making their all purpose cleaner, which is literally Dawn water and essential oils, they can do that because they have all of those things in their kit and have access to them.

Restocking Schedules and Expectations

For most of us, most of our techs are coming to an office to restock maybe once every day or once every other day, is pretty common depending on how frequently they’re scheduled. Of course, if they’re going to have all Wednesdays off, they’re probably not going to come in on Wednesdays, but if they are to be cleaning, they’re going to come in every day or every other day, and that’s mostly to do with the laundry situation. A lot of times, they’re not going to have to replenish their actual cleaning kit, tools and supplies, because they’re fine, they have enough, and they’re not going through that as much, especially if they’re doing just maintenance cleans for a couple days, they’re probably going to be good on that stuff.

I am not a person that would ever require my staff to come in every day and have their kits handed out, and turned in at the end of the day. It’s just not feasible for us, and that just feels like a lot of micromanaging of if they’re not capable of managing their own tools and supplies they’re probably not going to be a great cleaning tech if you have to do that to them. And additionally, just because we run crazy schedules, meaning we’ve got a lot of commercial work, we’ve got cleaners working in the evenings or early morning or whatever that’s not possible.

Setting Clear Expectations

A lot of our cleaners live in places where they go directly to, they get their supplies the day before, and they go directly to the house because it just makes sense, because they live super close to the client, or something like that. So there’s just too many what about this? What about this situation? And I don’t like, we’re hiring adults who should be able to handle that.

We don’t tell them that. It’s like, you are expected to have the tools and supplies for that day’s job and anything specific to that job. So if you’re gonna have to clean an oven and you don’t have oven cleaner, well, you need to go to the office and get an oven cleaner and then be at the job site on time. So putting that on them, that responsibility, of you are expected to manage yourself and your schedule when it comes to having the correct tools and supplies.

If you are having to frequently run cleaning supplies to a job site, there’s something to be looked at there. Of why is this happening? Why are they not stocking their kits enough to be prepared for this? And if they’re going into a first time clean or a move out clean, you should take an extra bag of cloths. You should be having these things on hand for you.

Client Supply Requirements

I did mention way earlier, and I’m just remembering this now that we supply everything for the most part, the only thing we expect our clients to supply is going to be toilet brushes in every single bathroom if it is a occupied home and occupied and so if it’s a vacant home, we will have the disposable toilet bowl or toilet brushes, like the Clorox ones or whatever. And obviously, because they’re probably not going to have a toilet brush there, but if they are going to, if this is a regular clean or just a home that is lived in, they need to have toilet brushes.

That is for a variety of reasons. One, the disposable ones are incredibly expensive, that is one of our most expensive things, and cleaners should not be using that at regular homes. So how we’ve basically gone about solving us going through a lot of that is, it is in our client guidelines that they must have a toilet brush in every single bathroom, because otherwise our cleaners, we’re spending time searching for the toilet brush. Say, we have a house with three bathrooms, and they have one toilet brush in the whole house, and now you’re carrying around their dirty little toilet caddy, which you should be cleaning that. But it’s very inefficient, because at the end of the day, you’re having to carry that around and then return it back to a bathroom.

There should be no issue with a client having a toilet brush in every bathroom if they have multiple bathrooms, so you can get them very cheaply in a variety of places. And so we just have made that a requirement, and also made it clear that if there is not a toilet brush present, you are not going to get the inside of your toilet bowl scrubbed.

Implementing Policies Effectively

We have started implementing that. It doesn’t feel great to our cleaning tech for sure, because it feels like they’re leaving the job undone, but what it’s done is immediately eradicated our clients not having a toilet brush in the home or in every bathroom, because then all of a sudden, the inside of the bowl is not getting scrubbed. They know the policy. They agreed to the policy, so they fixed that problem, so our cleaner just writes on the notes on the checklist. “Did not scrub inside of toilet because of no brush present.” And then, lo and behold, the next cleaning, they’re going to have a brush present.

That’s how we deal with that particular thing. Is it is the only thing that we’re going to require our clients to supply in those situations. Other than that, honestly, we will use client vacuums if they request again. Because a lot of, if, say, you have a client who has very severe allergies or just does not want a vacuum that’s used in any home despite us cleaning our vacuums and changing out filters in between houses and everything, and making sure that everything’s empty and cleaned out, that is totally the prerogative, but it needs to be a functioning, a well functioning vacuum, basically.

Equipment Preferences and Risk Management

We will not use things like Central vacs, despite I know that they may make it seem like it’s easier, but cleaners waste a lot of time figuring out the central vac if they’ve never been there, or we have ran into issues where they are not working properly, or dealing with the hose is just more trouble than it’s worth. So for the most part, we are using our vacuums at pretty much everywhere. And even if a client does have a decent vacuum, I just like my vacuum, I know how it works. I’m used to it, and then I’m not going to break their vacuum, because I don’t want that to happen.

For example, while I was up in Wisconsin, and I did a cleaning, and they were like, oh, because one of the things that they wanted me to do was vacuum the stairs. And they’re like, oh, we have a little handheld. Would you like to use that instead? And I’m like, Yeah, sure. My back was killing me. I was like, this will be easier than using my full size vacuum. And so I get halfway through the stairs and their little 30 year old dirt devil or Hoover, or whatever it was, took a dump. It died. It died on me. And now I’m like, I’m sorry, your vacuum died. And he was like, “Yeah, you know, this is the mall, and, you know, they have certain procedures.”

And it was at that point where I said, okay, and I ended up finding a job at the Lexus dealership. I was a janitor, and I said, I will not let this moment beat me. I will not let this situation beat me, because I’m not a bad person. So that’s why we prefer to use our vacuums as well.

Summary and Key Takeaways

I think that covers the gamut on tools and supplies, of Who supplies what, how much they should cost. Tracking those things makes it a lot easier, so we can see the patterns, and obviously, for bookkeeping and where we’re okay, can we find a cheaper solution in this particular category that’s not going to compromise on quality of the job getting done because of that? Or is there something we want to try out? And how much are we doing, experimenting with our tools and supplies. As I mentioned in previous episodes, I would keep that confined to your kit, or just one cleaning techs kit, so that you’re not experimenting with a bunch of stuff. Because if you decide on a different tool, and now you have all these other ones that are kind of obsolete, what are we going to do there? Supplies? It’s easier because you can just reuse them and be done with it. But with tools, it’s a little bit harder.

So I hope this helps on how we manage supplies, both on an inventory side of things as well as logistics side of things. If you guys do have any questions, I was little spacey today. So if you have any questions related to this topic, leave it down below. I need to do a big Q and A video coming up. So if you got anything that I touched on, you’re like, “Oh, what about this? What about this?” Definitely just put it in the comments below, and I will be happy to answer it as usual.

If you guys can leave a little froggy emoji, can you leave a frog down below? Because I am wearing green, as I do very often. Also, this top is from Walmart. Isn’t kind of cute. I wear it a lot. I’ve worn it for a long time, but some of my favorite clothes. So I just felt like I’d share that outfit of the day, I guess. And yeah, I will see you guys in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, bye.

If you enjoyed this episode of The Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five star review so we can reach more cleaners like you until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• ZenMaid Mastermind Facebook Group
• The Maid Summit 2025
• ZenMaid
• Cleaning for a Reason

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