Busy business women in Basingstoke were given a dirty talk by cleaning guru Kim - not the Kim of TV’s ‘Kim and Aggie’ - but our very own Kim Austen, the founder of local cleaning business ‘House Proud Services’ based in Basingstoke.

Invited by The Women in Business Group to talk at their April meeting, held at Basingstoke’s Apollo Hotel, members were treated to an enlightening talk by entrepreneur Kim Austen, who, facing redundancy eight years ago, made a clean sweep and started her own business completely from scratch.

Kim kick-started her cleaning business by placing an ad in a local paper and soon found she had more than enough work to cope with herself, so expanded the company’s capabilities by taking on staff to help her handle the successful rise of the business.

Today, House Proud Services employs 20 part-time cleaners and a full-time manager working for 90 customers in the Basingstoke area, equalling 200 cleans per month. Kim explains:

Cleaning is a very emotive subject. 70% of women work today, yet many business women still find it hard to accept help in their home, feeling failure if they can’t cope with life’s everyday demands of running a home, looking after a family and putting in a full day’s work.

Building her highly successful business over the last eight years, Kim has experienced more than she would sometimes care to.

It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. Some women will spring clean before the cleaner turns up, but we’ve also been in houses where the bed-sheets look like they have never been washed and seen animal faeces ground into the carpet from where they have been walked into the house from the back garden …! Some people’s private collections are fairly unusual too, like the young man who took a particular interest in collecting ladies thongs!

Kim concluded,

Don’t be afraid to get a professional cleaner into your home. If you are considering this option, the best way of choosing the right person is by recommendation. At House Proud Services we will come and talk to you about your own personal requirements and then match the right cleaning person for the tasks.

Lindsey Page, President of Women In Business, thanked Kim for her refreshing talk and then introduced Jane Carley, a Fundraising Executive from Wessex Cancer Trust, who gave a short presentation to the Members as this year’s chosen charity.

Jane said she was thrilled that their charity had been chosen, which would greatly help awareness of the Trust and face-to-face networking is a great way of achieving this. They have a strong association with Basingstoke and raise approximately £1million a year to help in a multitude of projects to help the fight against cancer.