Jennifer Kellam

Staff Photo by Tim Barber Cindy Pinion mops the floor as she cleans a house near Mountain Creek Road on Thursday. The economy has urged businesses to cut some services like housekeeping.

When Cindy Pinion was 5, her aunt would pay her a dollar to her for help with cleaning. Young Ms. Pinion loved it, and would soon be up to her elbows in Comet, playing and cleaning the sink.

Today she cleans houses for about 15 people in the Chattanooga area, something she started doing in the 1980s.

“It’s kind of ironic I ended up doing this for a living,” she said.

These days, the economy has taken a little toll on Ms. Pinion’s business. She’s lost a couple retail customers, and her corporate clients cut her pay by 20 percent. But she doesn’t complain because she still has enough work to keep her busy.

Around Chattanooga, many house cleaning business tell the same story.

Keith Harrison, owner of the Cleaning Authority, said business dropped off in October when the stock market started tanking but picked up again in March.

“Since then we’ve been back to our normal growth,” he said.

He brought the national franchise to Chattanooga two years ago and today has 350 residential clients and 22 employees.

Longtime Chattanooga cleaning service Merry Maids also has managed to maintain steady business over the past year. Owner Bill Bowers, who has run the business here for the past 23 years, said the high unemployment rate has taken its toll with a few cutbacks, but business has been good for the most part.

“The need is always there to clean your house,” he said.

Mr. Bowers said much of his business comes from baby boomers and older people. He uses the term “assisted living” to describe the services the business provides.

For some, business has been growing steadily, even through the economic downturn. Jennifer Kellam, owner of the 3-year-old Clean Impressions, said her business has grown in the past year.

“My business is basically built from referrals,” she said. “As long as I keep upholding my end of the bargain, they are happy to tell others about me.”

For Ms. Pinion, cleaning houses was not neccessarily what she thought she would be doing in a career, but it has allowed her independence and gives her a since of accomplishment at the end of the day.

Her business grew by word of mouth, she said, from service for a single house she tidied while working as a waitress at the Brass Register restaurant many years ago.

“It happened quite by accident,” she said.