Window cleaning for homes and shopfronts

How it works

Glass visibly dirties on a predictable cycle, which makes window cleaning one of the most naturally recurring local services there is. A shop wants its front spotless every month; a street of houses wants theirs done every four to eight weeks. You clean once, do it well, and book the next visit on the way out. The round compounds: each regular is a slot that refills itself.

The entry version is a bucket, a squeegee, a scrim and some ladder sense, cleaning ground-floor windows and shopfronts. That's under a hundred and earns from day one. The upgrade — a water-fed pole and a pure-water system — lets you reach upper storeys from the ground, safely and faster, and is what turns it from pocket money into a proper round. Buy it once the work justifies it, not before.

What it actually takes

• To start: a squeegee, applicator, scrim or microfibre, a bucket and a safe stepladder. The water-fed pole comes later and costs real money.
• Technique. A clean, streak-free finish is a learned skill; practise on your own windows until there are no edges and no smears.
• A round, built by density. Commercial customers on a fixed monthly schedule are the backbone; domestic cleans fill the gaps.
• Ladder and height discipline, or the pole that removes the ladder from the equation entirely.

Where it goes wrong

• Falls. Upper-storey ladder work is the real risk here; if you're not fully confident, do ground floor and shopfronts only, or invest in the pole.
• Streaks and missed edges. One sloppy job on a shopfront is on display all month to everyone who walks past.
• Chasing one-offs. The value is the recurring round; a diary full of single deep-cleans with no rebook is a treadmill.
• Seasonal thinking. It's year-round, unlike gutter cleaning or pressure washing, which makes it a good steady base to pair those onto.