About Us

About Pam Babcock –
My Chores Are Yours & Co.

Hello.  I am Pam Babcock and I welcome you to our website.

A “housewife” is usually a partner whose job is to see that a house is properly cleaned and maintained.  Being a housewife, one puts in a huge amount of time cleaning the house along with providing care to family members and family pets.  Today, there are also househusbands.

Many times a housewife follows a regular cleaning schedule that includes time for cleaning chores such as:  washing the woodwork, taking light globes down and washing them, vacuuming drapes, moving furniture to clean the baseboards and to edge vac, taking a scrub brush to tile grout, washing chair rungs and legs, cleaning windows and window frames, washing blinds, cleaning wall accessories,  washing waste baskets, getting a ladder and clean above cabinets and the like – Chores that are not performed on a daily schedule.  A housewife often puts in more than 40 hours every week cleaning.  I know I did.

I was raised with clichés such as “use plenty of elbow grease”, “so clean – you can eat off the floors”, “don’t let those dust bunnies get away from you” and Grandmother’s white glove test.”  My Grandmother did wear white gloves and however inconspicuously those gloved fingers passed over surfaces you were sure to see her attempt to remove the gathered dust with a “tis”; although she never said a word about the dust.  And we were forever moving the sofa cushions to retrieve coins that rolled off her lap while giving nickels to the young children for their piggy banks.

Why and how the company was developed:

I was fortunate to have been a “housewife”, for 10 years, before needing to enter the work force and going to college.  Way back then…there was little information on developing a business plan for the service industry and in getting my business degree I was assigned to develop a plan for researching and implementing a business plan for a service industry.   At that time I was already cleaning most of my professors’  homes as an individual.  Of’ course Molly Maid was just starting off their franchising in Canada (at the time I would have been the first Molly Maid franchise serving the Lansing area), and when I started my thesis members of SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) suggested I check out buying a Molly Maid franchise.   My first negative impression was that Molly Maid originated from Ontario, Canada.  Nothing wrong with good neighbors.  The franchise was not American owned.  The franchise fee was about the same as it is today, somewhere $14,000; with other costs added for advertising, automobiles and their intensive week training; today the start up costs are close to $100,000.

Somehow I just could not grasp running a cleaning company with only one week training – no matter how intensive!  Anyone can buy into Molly Maid with one week’s training.  I know my training certainly was much more than a week; in fact at that time more than 1/2 of my life!  And, I am still learning with the development of newer products and materials used in the homes of today.  Another concept that was lacking with that intensive training was that Company, employees and customers, all 3, needed to work together as  fine tuned gears – one moving the other.  I come from families of farmers.  Any sustaining farmer is a natural mechanic.  The tractor doesn’t work, the fields do not get plowed, the seeds do not get planted; although I used the analogy of gears I just knew that if something was to work, the parts needed to fit and move each part.  I needed to do more than make money, my career needed to fit me.

The members of SCORE did respect my reluctance in venturing into investing in a Molly Maid franchise and diligently led me on with my needed researching.  Overall, I interviewed over 700 people whom used some sort of cleaning service or another and people who performed the house cleaning services.  I wrote my thesis and on the day of my oral reviews I was asked when would I start MY COMPANY.  I replied that I did not have the monetary resources and was greatly surprised with an offer to help me get the financing that was needed.  Private investors put up the money more than 30 years ago.  I paid them off within the first year of business with an usurious rate of return.   I didn’t mind, I was supporting my 2 children and myself.

It was not until after I started my Company that I found there was assistance for women with children; I was required to fill out employment papers for a few of my employees.  Luckily, with a lot of work, my Company was able to care for my family’s needs and even help put my children through college without financial aid.  My son, Dr. Allen McNamara, has his Ph.D. in Geophysics and is teaching at Michigan State University and my daughter, Teresa House, has her teaching degree and taught Science and Math in junior high, is currently a great Mommie.   Over the last 40 years, I have learned many things about people and their needs.  I have stuck to a few of my “old fashioned morals and employee expectations”, such as, I will not tolerate regular use of alcohol or any drug use from my employees.  They get caught in a lie and they do not fit as a co-worker amongst our employees; trust is what we are about.  There are even a couple of expectations I have of customers; such as, treat my employees with respect and have realistic expectations of my employee’s willingness and ableness to perform their job. I do not mind taking time to train any employee, I have had employees work with supervisors for up to six weeks and have turned out to be supervisors themselves.  All of my supervisors have the authority to fire with no questions asked if they get any type of feeling that a certain employee is not trustworthy.  I have stuck to this policy from the beginning.  I was raised in the country where we did not lock even our automobiles and if a person said something it was so.  And, I know I like to sleep well at night and believe that my customers do to.

Many procedures written into my business plan is still in operation today.  Even though my Company has done my family and me well, I have not became the millionaire that was predicted in the projections.  Oh, well, I believe my Company is a blessing because it partakes so much of who I am and I am comfortable and pleased with the Company’s employees and customers.