Letter "E" is for Empathy and brought to you by 2021!

2020 was a year of loss, reflection, hardship, spotlight on inequalities and for some, opportunity. Our tenth year in business as a professional residential cleaning boutique was challenging and stressful, but we’ve scraped by due to the nature of our work (cleaning during a pandemic is good, who knew!) and support and loyalty of our clients and friends.

I love writing but haven’t written for a very long time due to this crazy year. This small break during the holidays gives us a chance to breathe a bit and to reflect. I have also been dreading this blog edition a bit because of the great personal loss that we experienced in 2020.

After almost 10 years of cleaning peoples homes you get to know your clients quite well, their pets, their children and we even become friends with some. We started our cleaning business, CondoFresh in March of 2011. Our second and third clients were Ken and Pablo.

In 2020 we lost both these wonderful men due to natural causes. Ken was an older man when we met him who had a kind heart. We admired his bravery, generosity and wisdom. He came out as gay later in life, was featured in a documentary about coming out late, and volunteered to cook meals regularly for the students of the Triangle Program, an alternative high school program for disadvantaged LGBT youth. Ken had a heart of gold and we looked forward to seeing him at every clean and will miss our “movie nights” and quality time together.

Pablo was a smart, resourceful and thoughtful man who was a respected travel agent and live music organizer in the local jazz music scene. A self-made successful entrepreneur with friends all over the world (some famous, but he was humble), he was a ball of knowledge, experience and advice that we benefitted from. Most of all, he was funny and he got my quirky sense of humour. It’s difficult to imagine going through life without his guidance and will miss our trips to his properties in Milton and Guelph and our time eating delicious vegan food.

Rest in peace Ken and Pablo, we will miss you both and the world is a little less without you.

Last year also saw the beginning of Covid-19, which in addition to the obvious horrible health and economic impacts, exposed a lot of the inequities in our world. We all saw how the playing field is not level.  If you have money, if you come from money, if you had a privileged start in life with opportunities, this pandemic did not change that. If you are poor or working poor, your situation is worse. What is also clear is that the very people who keep our cities, services and economies (maybe even your business!) going (the grocery store and pharmacy clerks, the food packers, the farm workers, the delivery drivers) are the very people who earn the least and suffer the most. It is a time to ask ourselves, is this the world in which we want to live? Now’s the chance.

The little guy, the small business, is quite often the working poor. It’s not always glamorous with huge expenses, long hours and little time off, and precarious. Right now there is no political party or level of government that understands and appreciates the contributions, efforts and challenges of small businesses. The response to Covid-19 has largely been disorganized, unprepared, inappropriate and has put those most at risk at even greater risk, including small businesses. Shame on our leaders for not thinking smarter and creatively. With their experience any successful entrepreneur could do better. It has been sad, and -- if it weren’t so tragic -- amusing to watch.

Racial, gender, social and economic inequities were strong themes in 2020, highlighted by the pandemic. White privilege is a real thing and not everyone in society has the same opportunities. This is something that we see in the cleaning industry in general where most workers are foreign-born, racialized, primarily women and living at or below the poverty line. Our hope for 2021 and beyond is that we start to treat each other with kindness, empathy and fairness. If we are truly in this together, we must help each other.

What can you do to help?

Acknowledging our privilege and the fact that some of us had a better start in life is a start. It doesn’t make us bad, but helps us to realize that some others could use a boost that perhaps we had.

Educate yourself. Since our school system won’t do it, check out documentaries and books that focus on the history of black people and indigenous people. The fact we don’t know their histories is shameful. Last year in February during Black History Month I watched “the Book of Negroes” on CBC, and had my eyes opened. Check out the Black Stories Collection on CBC TV and their online streaming service (CBC Gem) for educational documentaries and shows about the different challenges that marginalized groups around the world face.

Get to know those who work for you. Get to know them as people. Many of us in the service industry are educated and successful at what we do. It takes nerve, grit, patience and endurance to run a small business and to work in the service industry at any level. Service jobs are harder than they look. In most cases and above and beyond financial incentives, service providers just want to feel appreciated, understood and shown some kindness.

Share the wealth. If you are fortunate enough to have surplus money right now, maybe you decided NOT to travel to the Caribbean this year due to the virus, consider sharing a bit of it. Donate to a social cause of your choice, to an organization that helps others such as our homeless youth or the food bank, or give a surprise grant to an individual who is down-and-out and needs a break. At the end of the day, it’s not your money and fortune you’ll be proud of in life but your actions, attitudes and gestures to others. Why not improve your life and its meaning by giving someone less advantaged an opportunity.

We received an opportunity in 2020 for which we are extremely grateful. After two years of pilot projects and after two different looks (always go with your gut, we went back to a closer version of the first look!) our natural cleaning product line, Moorfreshouse officially launched online and we were invited to be a vender at two markets in the fall and winter.

We participated as a vendor at the Evergreen Brickworks Sunday Artisan Market last fall, at the Evergreen Brickworks Winter Farmers Market and the Xmus Holiday Muskoka Market in December. We humbly thank the organizers for including us, and for organizing and executing safe, responsible and fun events. We plan to participate at the Evergreen Brickworks Winter Farmers Market this winter beginning Saturday, January 16th from 8am to 1pm, and bi-weekly until the end of February. We are excited to have a venue, in addition to online, to share our all-natural cleaning products with the public.

We thank you all for your continued loyalty and support through these difficult times and a challenging 2020. We look forward to a better 2021 and a more equitable future for all and we look forward to continuing to work with you to keep your homes clean and safe and help get us all through this tragic period in our world. So long for now!

“Next normal” & cleaning

Cleaning & more cleaning

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends both cleaning and disinfecting all high-touch surfaces, such as kitchen counters and appliances, door & cupboard handles, light switches and washroom surfaces on a regular basis to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. If cleaning wasn’t important before, it is now integral to all strategies to help prevent the spread of viruses and keep us all safe. Many of us in urban centres live in close quarters, breathing the same air, coming into contact with those in our homes, our neighbours, family, friends and community each time we go to the grocery or hardware store. Whether you are cooped up at home in self-isolation or venturing out for essential work or shopping for necessities, the surfaces at home can become contaminated and should be wiped down on a regular basis.

As Ontario and the country slowly re-open amidst the global pandemic there is a heightened importance to cleaning and disinfecting surfaces. The Ontario government released the first stage of its plan to re-open Ontario’s economy, and for each sector cleaning regularly (AKA on-site sanitation) is a part of the action plan to keep customers and employees safe (source: “Ontario resources to prevent COVID-19 in the workplace”). The usual products known to disinfect - bleach and alcohol - are scarce as stores struggle to meet demand. Since we should all be cleaning more often, have you thought about what these products are potentially doing to your health and to the environment? As we like to say, “you are what you clean with”. The cleaning products that you use end up on the surfaces you touch, the floors that you walk on and in the air you breathe. Since the pandemic began in the U.S. there has been an increase in calls to poison centres: “The daily number of calls to poison centers increased sharply at the beginning of March 2020 for exposures to both cleaners and disinfectants” (source: “Cleaning and Disinfectant Chemical Exposures and Temporal Associations with COVID-19 — National Poison Data System, United States, January 1, 2020–March 31, 2020”).

With focus put on safer cleaning practises (more frequently) and smarter choices of what to clean with (natural), you can avoid harming yourself, your family and customers. In keeping with CDC guidelines for cleaning surfaces, the moor freshouse line of natural cleaning products intends to clean and disinfect surfaces with safer, natural alternatives. For example, our all-purpose cleaners of lavender mint and clove spearmint contain the active cleaning agent hydrogen peroxide, which is a CDC-approved disinfectant and releases water and oxygen as bi-products. Our all-purpose creme-fresh contains the natural sanitizing tea tree oil soap. Wiping the surfaces in your home or business on a regular basis with our line of products will clean and disinfect without the worry of exposing yourself and others to harsh chemicals.