Who Says Grime Doesn't Pay?

By Linda Hammontree

It was a dead goat. Now we knew what we had smelled at the first house we cleaned. Dead goats, dead snakes, a micro-waved roach, an eleven-year-old bootlegger, a bidet---these were a few situations we, Linda Hammontree and Peggy Moss, encountered as we cleaned our way through the hallways and utility rooms of life. Our cleaning adventures began innocently enough. We wanted to fight boredom and earn extra spending money. We named our business Q. T. House Cleaners (quick and thorough), printed some business cards and fliers, and handed them out. We had no idea what calamities awaited us. We kept a journal so we could later convince ourselves that these events really happened. One of us is still in therapy for the shower caper. "Who Says Grime Doesn't Pay?" is based on the actual (although somewhat embellished at times) adventures of two zany ladies who have been friends for over forty years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Hammontree
• Release date: Feb 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311997067

Book preview

WHO SAYS GRIME DOESN'T PAY?

An insightful, humorous look into the world of two zany housewives who started a cleaning business to fight boredom and bill collectors.

By Linda Hammontree and Peggy Moss

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Linda Hammontree and Peggy Moss

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Preface

Anyone Going To The Dump?

The Doctor Who Was Always Out

The Missing Money

Moving Day

How Would You Like Your Roach?

Better Home and Weeds

We Lost Our Innocence and Dusting Cloths in Another Woman's Bedroom

Going To The Chapel

The Lady Who Would Iron

Not All Nuts Grow on Trees

Money Can't Buy Happiness, But It Can Buy Dust-Free Walls

Coffee, Tea, Or Me?

The Broken Leg

A New Addition

Goldie and the Three Bids

Booze Anyone?

Whose Office Is This, Anyway?

Extra, Extra, Read All About It

The Mailbox Caper

The Shower Caper

Seriously, Who Is This?

How Not to Deal With Finances

Preface

Peggy and I don't have any sisters, but we have the next best thing—each other. We have been best friends for better than forty years. Together, we have shared many precious times and memories. Some of these crazy adventures we are sharing in this book. These are true events, but we did change some names. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put your feet up, sit back and have some fun. We hope you laugh out loud and perhaps even see yourself in one of these stories.

I once read that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. And so it is with time. Once the kids started school, my best friend, Peg, and I found that we had a lot of time to kill. When the mind is not being engaged in an interesting activity, all sorts of non-exciting things can occur like watching The Price is Right,, I Love Lucy reruns and carrying on extended conversations with telemarketers. One saleslady wanted to give me her email address so we could carry on conversing electronically.

That's when Peg, and I decided it was time to do something new and different. We tried bowling, ceramics, oil painting, and needlepoint. We even tried to play tennis, but not knowing how to keep score really slowed us down. As two very competitive people, we never knew when the game was over, and more importantly, who won. To remedy this, we decided to keep score using badminton rules, but we kept getting strange looks and laughter from other players when we called out fifteen, fourteen, your serve.

The problem was that we had unlimited talent with limited revenue. We were literally wasting away our time and minds in suburban land. Putting our heads together, we mused, What could two housewives and mothers legally do to earn a little extra cash without working a 9 to 5 job? After making a list of jobs and qualifications, we found that the only real expertise and training we had in common was housework.

Homemaking, if you will. Together, we had a combined total of 27 years' experience, and we were born with the necessary equipment. We had some business cards printed and started passing them out to any and every person who would take them. We called our business "The Q.T. (quick and thorough) House Cleaners. We sat back, poured ourselves a cup of coffee and waited for the phone to ring.

Before long, we had plenty of callers.

Anyone Going To The Dump?

One of the first houses we cleaned forced the city to open a new