Image courtesy of Gino Santa maria/Hemera/Thinkstock Now ... The Next By: Don Aslett 50 Years Moving from trial and error to training and value. I Don Aslett is founder/stock-holder in Varsity Facility Service, author of over 40 books relating to the clean-ing and maintenance indus-try and is a frequent speaker at professional events. He can be reached at DAslett@ VarsityFS.com or visit www. MuseumOfClean.com. In the early 1950s, when cleaning began to emerge as a profession instead of just “the janitor job,” I started a cleaning business as a college student to work my way through school. I had not a clue how to clean. My only teachers were trial and error, reading a few labels and some enthusiastic but rare sanitary supply salesmen who came on after-hours jobs to show us product use and some basic procedures. Based on the amount of carpet shrunk, floors ruined using some killer strippers and many walls and ceilings permanently and ignorantly streaked, one could write a book. In fact, starting about 30 years later, I did write over 30 books about cleaning. leagues as possible from my distant Idaho location. My cleaning company, Varsity Contractors, then doing some national accounts like the Bell System, discovered that training and educating our house service people really paid off. This Publication Still lacking the needed penetration to change the efficiency of the industry, a publication put out by Charlie Wheeler appeared to answer a need. I personally put in to buy it when Wheeler retired. Dan Harris, an experienced publisher, ended up owning the publication and pioneered it to be-come the Cleaning & Maintenance Management magazine that you are holding in your hands today. The publication provided what the industry was missing by gathering with the contractors, manu-facturers and distributors and getting resources and information out to all of us. The best thing it did was expand the dimensions of “facility maintenance” from cleaning floors and restrooms into different areas like safety, the envi-ronment, depreciation, energy, scheduling, pro-duction rates, etc. The magazine tapped the champions of the indus-try — leaders and experts in the field — and featured years of “how-to” articles and counsel. for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search keyword: Anniversary . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select DIRECTORY from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: History of Clean . Keeping It Local There was almost zero information or publications available as our industry and many new associa-tions were in their infancy. Those days were truly the time of the “local cus-todian,” and newer and better chemicals and tools took decades to get to the cleaning crews. Seminars and training were rare and scattered, if available at all. Enthusiastic with the profession, I researched, wrote and spoke to as many companies and col-June 2014 8 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ®
CMM – Archives June 2014: 8
