Good afternoon.
As I sit here having some tea, I started reflecting a bit on why Rub A Dub Dub Window Scrub came about and how it really grew out of something that had been bothering me for years.
From IT to Real Estate Photography
Before starting RDDWS, I was — and still am — a jack of all trades and a master of many, thank you very much. 😉
I was in the Information Technology field for about 23 years, then started helping my then-fiancé with real estate a bit here and there and eventually got into real estate photography by happenstance.
We also owned a few hair salons, and I’ll touch upon that in a second.
Then along came COVID, and that changed everything…
Shops closed, but leases were still due, and income from the salons…was not.
Our relationship strained and eventually broke. We realized our relationship had pretty much run its course.
Now, just for the record, we still love each other, we just don’t really like each other…if that makes sense.
Ask a married couple that’s been together over 20 years or so. They can confirm.
This is the way.
So later on, around 2023, after everything had changed, a buddy of mine was over one night and we had some wine and were talking business, success, and where we wanted to go with different ideas.
He has a drone service company and we were having a glass of wine and talking shop.
I enjoy wine over beer.
Somewhere in that conversation, I cooked up the idea of getting back into real estate photography as a hobby and side business.
Call me a glutton for punishment.
When I got back into the profession, one thing I noticed repeatedly was just how dirty the windows were in many of the homes I was photographing.
It meant I would spend time afterward Photoshopping out dirty windows, fingerprints, smudges on mirrors, marks on glass and all the other things that showed up in the photos.
And it started bugging me.
The Fingerprints That Started Driving Me Crazy
That brought back flashbacks to the salon days.
Customers would often push directly on the glass instead of using the handles when they were coming or going.
We had a swinging door that flapped both ways, so you just pushed to get in and pushed to leave. It was kind of unique.
However, customers would leave fingerprints and smudges all over the glass throughout the day.
It became a pet peeve of mine.
At one point I had to wonder, “Is this the first sign of me getting grumpy?”
Then I realized…no.
I just really don’t like dirty windows.
Fingers all over the glass.
Ugh.
It always amazed me how people would push the glass when there was a perfectly good handle sitting right there.
I mean, that is what the handle is for.
However, for whatever reason, the glass always seemed to be the first choice.
Maybe it was habit, maybe it was convenience, or maybe the handles were simply being ignored.
Either way, throughout the day, those fingerprints were everywhere.
That experience made me much more aware of just how quickly glass can become dirty in a busy business.
The front door is one of the first things customers see, and it is also one of the first things they touch.
It’s like a fingerprint magnet!
Back to the Real Estate Photography
Again, back to the real estate photography.
One of the things I constantly found myself dealing with was dirty glass.
Fingerprints, smudges, streaks, dirty windows, mirrors that hadn’t been wiped down…all of it showed up in photographs, and I would end up trying to clean it up afterward in post-production.
After seeing it over and over again, I started paying a lot more attention to windows everywhere I went.
That is also where one of my favorite sayings came from:
“Dirty windows on a business are like dirty shoes on a first date. Something just seems off — even if you can’t quite put your finger on it…although others have already put their fingers all over the glass.”
Think about walking into a restaurant, store, salon, office or really any business.
You can have a beautiful exterior, a great interior, great employees and a great product.
But when you look through the storefront and see fingerprints, smudges, dirt and glass that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in months, years, or sometimes NEVER…it changes the way the entire business feels.
As a customer, I notice those things.
The appearance and cleanliness of a business are part of the experience.
A storefront is often one of the first things a customer sees, and the windows are a huge part of that first impression.
The front door is especially important because nearly everyone who walks into the business sees it and touches it.
I also realized something else.
Exterior windows occasionally get a little help from Mother Nature when it rains.
The inside doesn’t.
That is where fingerprints, handprints, dust and all the everyday evidence of people coming and going tend to build up.
And nobody is coming along with a rainstorm to clean the inside of the glass.
The Idea for Rub A Dub Dub Window Scrub
There are plenty of businesses that are great at what they do but simply do not have the time, equipment or desire to keep up with their windows.
After all, it isn’t their primary job.
So I started putting together the idea of offering a straightforward window-cleaning service focused on helping businesses keep their storefronts looking the way the rest of their business deserves to look.
Clean windows.
Clean glass.
A better first impression.
One less thing for the business owner to worry about.
Apparently There’s More to This Than a Squeegee
Like I imagine a lot of people do when they first decide they’re going to clean windows, I started with a trip to Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Grab a squeegee, some window cleaner, a bucket and a few towels.
How complicated could this really be?
Because that’s basically what I did at Kinks Be Gone Hair Factory, one of our salons.
Just simple, off-the-shelf window-cleaning supplies to clean the doors and windows there.
Well…apparently there is a little more to professionally cleaning windows than wandering through the cleaning aisle at Home Depot.
LOL.
Once I started digging into it, I realized there was a whole world of professional window-cleaning tools, techniques and equipment I had never really thought about before.
Different squeegees, channels, rubbers, scrubbers, detailing towels, extension poles, pure-water systems…and apparently window cleaners can have very strong opinions about all of them.
Who knew?
That eventually led me from the basic stuff you can pick up at Home Depot or Lowe’s to companies that actually specialize in professional window-cleaning equipment, like Window Cleaning Resource — WCR and J. Racenstein.
That’s where I started learning more about the equipment professional window cleaners use every day and started figuring out what I wanted to use for Rub A Dub Dub Window Scrub.
And like most things I get interested in, once I started learning about it…
Down the rabbit hole I went.
Before long, I wasn’t just thinking about a bucket and a squeegee anymore.
I was thinking about what equipment would make the work faster, cleaner and more efficient, what would work best for storefronts, what I could carry easily from job to job, and what would help me provide the kind of result I wanted people to associate with RDDWS.
So somewhere between dirty salon doors, Photoshop, fingerprints all over everything, and learning that there are apparently about a thousand different ways to build a squeegee…Rub A Dub Dub Window Scrub started becoming a real business.
And Scrubby Was Hatched
So in 2026, Scrubby the Duck and Rub A Dub Dub Window Scrub were born…or hatched, if you will.
What started as an idea became a window-cleaning business serving businesses and homeowners throughout Los Angeles and Orange County.
The idea is pretty simple.
Clean glass, a better first impression, and one less thing for a business owner to worry about.
Because sometimes the difference between a storefront that looks okay and one that looks inviting is simply being able to clearly see through the glass.
And if your windows are starting to look a little like the ones that drove me crazy in the first place…well, now you know somebody who would like to clean them. Request a free window-cleaning quote.
Rub A Dub Dub, Give Your Windows a Scrub.
Thanks for the read on just how and why Rub A Dub Dub came about.
Have a great day!
Wayne