BOOTSTRAP BUSINESSES

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It was necessary, of course, to come up with a fee schedule for our clients ... and we decided to base the price for our cleaning services upon the number of bedrooms in the house. We charge $30, for example, to spruce up a two bedroom dwelling. (Our service includes cleaning all the appliances ... disinfecting tubs, showers, commodes, and sinks ... washing dirty walls and woodwork ... and sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping the floors.) We charge an additional $35 to wash all of the home's windows-inside and out—$10 for mowing lawns, and $10 to haul away trash that can't be handled by the regular garbageman. Our interior painting fee is generally $40 per room ... while-on exterior jobs-our rule of thumb is 40 cents per square foot of living space (a house that is 50 by 30 feet, for example, has 1,500 square feet of living space ... and will earn us $600!). We charge a minimum of $5.00 per hour for repairs (plus materials) on an, job—so far our fix it work has And the majority of as included replacing broken windowpanes, building new screens or rescreening old ones, hanging doors, and patching holes.

We've found that we can stay as busy as we like with our new business. And since we began our part-time endeavor-some nine months back-the two of us have netted a total of $2,000 ... above and beyond the added benefits of tools left over from special jobs, and furniture and bric-a-brac that have either been abandoned In houses by tenants who've moved out or thrown away by current occupants.

All in all, our bootstrap business has been the perfect moneymaker for us . . . the market is limitless, and the experience itself has been a valuable reward!

Dennis Frank Burkett
Jacksonville, Fla.

Last year—after I was discharged from the Air Force—I moved from California to Ormond Beach, Florida with my pregnant wife and six year-old son. We planned to wait out the winter "down South" before returning to our home state of Indiana ... and I'd decided to enter school part time during the cold months. Finances, therefore, were bound to be tight, so I began to research various moneymaking ventures. And, as luck would have it, I came across two articles in THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS' Handbook of Home Business Ideas and Plans: Clarence Sockwell's "My Paperback Book Exchange" and Paul Encimer's "Used Books Can Give You a New Life".

As I mulled over the idea of running a book exchange, I opened the yellow pages to check out my potential competition ... and—to my surprise—there was not one used bookstore in all of Ormond Beach. With that, my mind was made up ... I would open the "Ormond Book Exchange''.

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