House Cleaning

Ongoing cleaning for private homes on a regular schedule — weekly, every other week or monthly. Insured, background-checked employees — not contractors found through an app — and a schedule you do not have to rebook every time.

What it is

We have cleaned commercial buildings since 2001, and we clean houses on the same footing: employees rather than contractors, insured and bonded, background-checked, trained in our own program, and assigned to your home rather than dispatched to it at random.

That last part is the whole difference. Most of what makes house cleaning good is knowledge that cannot be written on a checklist — which floor cannot take water, where the spare key lives, which cupboard door sticks, that the guest room only needs doing once a month, that the dog is friendly but the cat is not. A cleaner who has been coming for two years knows all of it. A different person every visit knows none of it, and you end up supervising your own cleaning service.

In an office that is a nice statistic. In your house it is the reason you stop having to leave notes.

What's included

A standard recurring clean. Yours is set at the first visit, and anything on this list can come off, or something else can go on.

Every visit

• Kitchen: counters and splashback, sink and taps, outside of all appliances, stovetop, microwave inside and out, cabinet fronts, table, floor swept and mopped, bins emptied and relined
• Bathrooms: tub, shower and screen, toilet inside and out, sink and vanity, mirror, taps polished, floor washed, towels straightened
• Bedrooms: beds made or linen changed if left out, surfaces dusted, floors vacuumed or mopped, mirrors
• Living areas: dusting of all reachable surfaces including shelves, sills and picture frames, upholstery vacuumed, floors done, glass tables cleaned
• Throughout: skirting boards, light switches, door handles, stair rails, cobwebs, and a tidy of anything obviously out of place

On a rotation, so nothing is missed and you are not paying for it every visit

• Inside the oven, inside the refrigerator, inside kitchen cabinets
• Interior windows and tracks, and blinds washed rather than dusted
• Baseboards washed, doors and frames wiped down, vents and ceiling fans
• Under and behind furniture that can be moved safely
• Garage sweep-out, porch and entry

Add on when you need it

• Carpet and upholstery deep cleaning with the same equipment we use commercially
• Exterior window cleaning, including upper floors from the ground
• Power washing of drives, patios, decks and siding
• Before or after a party, a holiday, or houseguests
• Post-renovation clean-up once the trades are out

How often

We clean homes weekly, every other week or monthly, and the right one depends less on the size of the house than on what happens in it between visits. Pick the one that sounds like your household.

A common middle ground. Two adults working, or a family whose children are past the toddler stage. Fourteen days is about as long as a kitchen and a bathroom go before they need more than a wipe.

Verdict: a sensible place to start. Move up or down after a month, not on day one.

Busy households. Young children, pets that shed, a home where people work, or a house big enough that a fortnight leaves it visibly behind.

Verdict: worth it if you currently clean between visits yourself.

Smaller homes, single occupants, second homes, or a household that cleans regularly and wants the heavy work done.

Verdict: fine for the right house. Tell us honestly what happens between visits and we will say whether it fits.

Whichever you pick, it is not locked in. Plenty of households start monthly and move to every other week once they see what a visit actually covers, and a few go the other way.

A single clean — before a party, after houseguests, at the end of a renovation, for a spring clean, or to see whether you like us before committing to a schedule.

Verdict: a reasonable way to start. Most people who do go on to a schedule.

Move-in and move-out

An empty house is a different job: every cupboard is open, every surface is reachable, and there is no furniture hiding anything. A move-out clean is what gets a deposit back or a house ready to list. A move-in clean is the one that makes a house feel like yours rather than like the last family's.

Both cover the full unit: inside all cabinets and drawers, oven and refrigerator inside, every bathroom fixture descaled, all floors, all interior glass and tracks, light fixtures, vents, baseboards and closets. Same scope as our apartment turns, which is work we do every week.

What to expect

• A walkthrough or a phone call. For most homes a conversation and a few photos is enough; for larger houses we would rather come and look. We agree the scope, the rooms, the frequency and anything that needs special handling.
• A written quote, and a fixed price per visit. If the first clean needs to be a deeper one, we say so before we start rather than after.
• The same cleaners, on a set day. You know who is coming and roughly when. If they are ever off, whoever covers has your file, not a blank sheet.
• Keys and access handled properly. Logged in our system, never labeled with your address, and returned when you say so.
• Tell us if something is not right. We come back and put it right. That is the whole answer, and it is why the same crew is worth more than the cheapest quote.