August Newsletter 2021
COVID Update
Here we are, 18 months or so into a global pandemic.
Lots of things have changed here at Denver Concierge, and we are sure it is the same in your world. It has been a while since we communicated our COVID protocols, so we wanted to refresh everyone on what we are doing to stay on top of the situation.
In short, not much has changed here. In the time since COVID, we have yet to have any issues in your homes with COVID transmission. We have certainly had a few cases (unrelated to our workplace), but all of those folks have been cleared to return to work.
We currently have zero cases of COVID at Denver Concierge.
Our ladies will still be wearing masks and all other required personal protective equipment. We are also still taking all precautions to make sure our workforce is healthy before we send them out to you. Anyone not feeling well or exhibiting a fever is asked to stay home.
The best advice we can give to 100% ensure there are no issues going forward is to simply keep your distance from our teams. This is for the safety of both parties, as there is no 100% effective way to know if either of us might be contagious for whatever reason.
Any instructions should be given to Angela in our office and those will be relayed directly to our Team Leader in the field.
We remain very confident in our ability to clean your home safely and without incident. If you have any questions about this or need further clarificati0n, please contact us at your convenience.
Thank you for helping us clean your homes safely and efficiently!
Top of the Town 2021
Ah yes, the best stuff in Denver. Back to our friends at 5280 Magazine who annually publish the best places in our fair city.
From culture and nightlife to dining and shopping, 82 categories in total are covered.
In fact, over 26,000 votes were cast, so this is truly a list of what “we” love in Denver.
The best burger? Well Cherry Cricket, of course! Santiago’s chimes in with the best breakfast burrito and GQue Barbeque won their category as well.
We still think it’s a bummer that they don’t list housecleaning companies in their poll, but we hope to get that changed sometime soon!
We certainly hope we would get your vote!
The complete 5280 2021 Top of the Town list can be found here.
Cherry Creek Arts Festival
We are so happy that the Cherry Creek Arts Festival has returned this year, celebrating its 30th.
It will be held over Labor Day weekend, ending on Monday evening the 6th at 6 PM.
As we crawl back to normalcy, it is nice to see a Denver “staple” back in business.
There are some changes for this year to be aware of, however.
For starters, the festival has been moved from downtown Cherry Creek to the creekside area of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center.
More importantly, the festival is using a timed entry approach, which requires free registration via Eventbrite.
Beyond those changes, the festival will still be providing fabulous art and entertainment.
The music and entertainment schedule can be found here.
For registration information and to get your free timed entry spot, visit CCAF here.
We hope to see you there!
A Smarter Home
Just how smart is your home? We aren’t sure about ours, some days it is smarter than others.
Seriously, though, we know many of you have Amazon Alexa. Did you know that Alexa can control smart lights, switches, and plugs?
Even crazier, there are wi-fi-enabled light bulbs that can connect to your home network, with or without Alexa or the Google Assistant.
Of course, there are easy-to-use things like the Ring doorbell and Nest, but what about next-level tech? We have saved a lot of money in water by using Rachio, for example, which is a system that controls your sprinklers via an app, saving you water.
From smart lighting outside your home to carbon monoxide detectors, nearly every device in your home can be remotely controlled.
How fun to come home and have the lighting and temperature right where you want it, with your favorite music playing.
Not sure we can get something to have the wine ready, but that is another discussion.
PC Magazine did a fabulous piece on the best tech of ’21 room by room and it can be found here.
We also found a short article by TechHive that gives more insight, and it is here.
Lots of really cool stuff out there, pretty soon we will have flying cars like the Jetsons!
U.S. Life Expectancy
For the first time in a while, U.S. life expectancy has dropped. In fact, life expectancy in 2020 was down 1.5 years, the largest drop since WWII.
Fairly obvious why this happened, as COVID-19 contributed to 74% of the decline. Not surprisingly, drug overdoses are making their way up the list as well, with more than 93,000 people dying in 2020.
We found some interesting quirks in the data that we wanted to share with you here.
From the article: “The study found the U.S. decrease in life expectancy in 2020 was 8.5 times greater than the average decrease in peer countries.”
“And the U.S. declines were most pronounced among minority groups, specifically Black and Hispanic people.”
“U.S. Hispanics — who have a longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic Blacks or whites saw the largest decline in life expectancy during the pandemic, dropping three years from 81.8 years in 2019 to 78.8 years in 2020. Hispanic males saw the biggest decline, with a drop of 3.7 years. COVID-19 was responsible for 90% of the decline among Hispanics.”
The full article by NPR can be found here.
While we weren’t surprised by the decline, the demographic breakdown was more than a little disturbing to us.
We aren’t smart enough to know the solution to these heady problems, but we do have a strong feeling that we can all do better for each other going forward.
Monthly Award Winners
Our monthly award winners for July were Aurora Dominguez, Paz Jimenez, Maria Zapata, Maria Salazar, and Josefina Quinonez.
In the Team Leader ranks, it was Juana Olivas and Isela Mendoza.
We are so proud of our winners, and of all the folks that are in and out of your homes each week.
We continue to be grateful to you for allowing us into your lives during these challenging times.
Please join me in congratulating our best performers for the month of July.
Queen Bee Corner
by Angela
Almost from the beginning of the company, our image has been somewhat retro; proudly old school.
With technology leaping ahead to make lives easier we have been reluctant to partake in certain aspects of this new world.
We believe in customer contact in real-time with a real person. No bots or answering services here.
We also believe in letting the teams clean the way they have always cleaned; a full-on deep clean; you never have to worry about robotic vacuums here either.
Sometimes a little nostalgia can act as a soothing balm for the stresses of the world. We hope we are that to you.
Bee