My father’s story

I'm from a little town just south of Payson, Utah, called Spring Lake. I grew up through the 70's into the 80's. I was the town paperboy, a 15-mile bike route every day. After living in Payson for the last 25 years, we moved back to Spring lake, and we are in the middle of building a new house. My wife and I met in high school and got married four years later after serving a mission in Nashville, TN for the LDS Church.

I started college in there somewhere, got bored, and began my cleaning business as a side project with my older brother. We also had a successful furniture shop where we built custom furniture and cabinets for people. After a couple of years, I decided to take over the cleaning business, Purity Cleaning Systems, full time. My wife Annette and I went on to have two girls, then five years later had a boy; then four years later had two more girls, trying to get another boy.

The early years was feast or famine, then things started to get good. As we started growing, we hired high school kids to work after school and through the summer — some of whom worked for me off and on for 10 years. Fast forward the end of 2001 after 9/11. I had 12 employees and was working all the time. That changed everything, and I decided to slow down. I scaled back and stopped hiring new people and by 2005 it was just me. I was going to clean some windows in a cabin and decided to get my son Tyson out of the house away from all those girls. So, at the age of 12, Tyson began learning how to clean windows. By the end of that summer, he was getting pretty good at it. Fast forward again to 2015 and Tyler, after serving a mission in Cleveland, OH and trying his hand at some other business and managing a hotel in downtown Salt Lake. He told me that he wanted to grow Purity Cleaning Systems back into a large business that he could someday take over. We have been growing at a rate of 30% every year since, and he is the driving force behind that. So today, my oldest two girls are married, and between the two of them, we have five grandchildren. We have one daughter in Brazil serving a mission, and the youngest still has a year left in high school. They have all worked and helped with the business at one point or another.

The main core of Purity Cleaning Systems is the window cleaning, but we also have other services that we provide. The most unique thing about Purity Cleaning Systems is that we have one of the most experienced (nice way of saying old) window cleaners in the state of Utah and the youngest, most experienced window cleaner in the state working together. Because of our experience, people have learned to trust that we only do the best work that can be expected. We will never try to sell you anything that you don’t want. We will let you know any problems with your windows and other things we might see as we are working around your home to help you with any maintenance needs that you might not be aware of. We do recommend that you have your windows cleaned outside at least twice a year, inside once. But to take advantage of the great discounts that we offer, we can clean windows however many times a year that you like. Windows are a big investment and, if not taken care of, they will start looking bad and some of that can be reversed. A tip we often give to homeowners is don’t ever let sprinklers water get on the windows.

My son, Tyson Menlove, is in this for the long haul. Myself, two or three more years of getting out and climbing ladders will be all I can do. At some point, I will become the voice on the phone and the one looking at new jobs giving bids and keeping my son from making some of the mistakes that I made when I got started 33 years ago.

-Von Menlove