From a Ladder and a Bucket at 18, to DEC Today
Long before DEC existed, I was up ladders with a bucket and a chamois at 18 years old. Here's what traditional window cleaning taught me — and why I do it differently now.
I cleaned my first window for money when I was 18. No pure water system, no water-fed pole — just a bucket, a squeegee, a chamois leather, and a ladder against the wall.
If you've never done it the old way, it's harder than it looks. You're carrying a full bucket up a ladder, working out how to reach the top corner of a bay window without overbalancing, and doing it all over again at the next house. In winter your hands go numb before you're halfway down the street. In summer the glass dries before you've finished wiping it, and you're chasing streaks the whole way round.
I did that round for 3 years around Lymington in Hampshire, mostly knocking on doors, mostly collecting cash on the day, mostly working around whatever the weather decided to do that morning. It taught me a few things that have stuck with me:
What traditional window cleaning actually teaches you
You learn to read a property fast. Every house is a slightly different puzzle — awkward angles, conservatories, windows above a porch roof you can't get a ladder near. You work it out or you don't get paid.
You learn what customers actually care about. Not one person ever asked me about the brand of squeegee I used. They cared about turning up when I said I would, doing a proper job, and not making a mess of their flower beds with the ladder.
You learn the limits of the old way. Ladders against a house are a genuine safety risk, for you and for the property. Tap water leaves streaks no matter how good your technique is, especially anywhere with hard water. And cash on the doorstep means someone has to be in, has to have the right notes, and has to remember it's cleaning day in the first place.
Why DEC does it differently now
Years on, coming back to window cleaning with DEC, I didn't want to just repeat what I did at 18. The trade's moved on, and so have I.
That's the whole reason DEC runs the way it does:
- Pure water instead of a bucket and chamois — no streaks, whatever the water's like locally, and a proper finish on frames and sills, not just the glass.
- A water-fed pole instead of a ladder — safer for me, safer for your property, and it reaches upstairs windows a ladder never could without me being balanced on your flower bed.
- A text the day before, not a knock and hope you're in — the bit of the old job that always felt most unreliable, fixed properly.
- Card or Direct Debit instead of cash on the day — nobody has to remember to leave money out, and I'm not carrying cash round the estate.
Everything I do at DEC now is built to fix the actual weak points of how I used to do this job at 18 — not because the old way didn't work, but because I've had years since then to work out what a genuinely reliable service looks like from the customer's side, not just the cleaner's.
If you've had window cleaners before who didn't turn up when they said, or left streaks no matter how hard they scrubbed — that's exactly the gap DEC was built to close.
