We keep Santa Monica homes clean

Salt air and sand reach every room

Santa Monica sits right on the bay, and the ocean gets into every house here whether you can see the water or not. The onshore breeze carries salt, and it settles as a thin gray film on windows and mirrors. Then there is sand. It rides in on shoes and beach towels, then works down into rugs and into the tracks of every sliding door.

Left alone, both of them do real damage. Salt holds moisture, so the film on glass turns cloudy and gets harder to lift every week it stays. Sand is worse on floors. When people walk it across wood, it works like sandpaper and dulls the finish along the paths they use most. In a slider track it wears down the rollers until the door drags. None of this shows in a week, but after a season the floors look dull and the glass looks gray.

So on a house near the beach, the floors come first. We vacuum sand out of the rugs and slider tracks before any wet cloth touches the floor. A damp mop on a sandy floor just drags grit across the wood. Then we wipe the salt film off the inside of the glass and the sills under it. Bathrooms get extra time too, because the marine layer keeps the air damp and mildew starts in the caulk and grout first.

• Sand vacuumed out of rugs and slider tracks
• Salt film wiped off inside glass and sills
• Bathroom grout and caulk scrubbed for mildew
• Old wood floors mopped damp, never wet
• Kitchen counters and cabinet fronts wiped down

Santa Monica homes range from cottages to condos

The south side of the city, around Ocean Park, is full of older wood-frame bungalows and small Spanish-style cottages. Many still have their original wood floors and older windows. Those windows are where the damp shows up. On a gray morning, water beads on the inside of the glass and runs down onto the painted sill. That sill is where mildew tends to start. Old wood floors should not get soaked, so we clean them with a damp mop and never a wet one.

Most people in Santa Monica rent, and much of the city lives in apartments and condos. A lot of the apartments are stucco buildings from the middle of the last century, with compact kitchens and small bathrooms. Many of those bathrooms have no window, only a fan. A room like that stays damp long after a shower, so soap scum and mildew build faster there than anywhere else in the unit. When we clean an apartment, that bathroom gets the most scrubbing.

North of Montana Avenue the houses get bigger, and the streets are lined with tall old trees. A big house has more floor and more bathrooms, and the trees drop leaves and pollen that get tracked in at every door. For a house like that, start with a deep clean to clear the buildup, then book standard cleanings to keep it from coming back. We will tell you which one your house needs when we give you the estimate.

We also clean offices and small shops

Small businesses fill Santa Monica, from the boutiques along Montana Avenue and Main Street to the offices downtown. We clean offices and workplaces, and we do sanitation cleaning for small businesses and boutique stores. A shop near the beach deals with the same things a house does. Sand comes in on every customer's shoes, and salt air leaves a haze on the glass by the front door.

Sanitation cleaning in a store is about the places hands go. The front door handle and the counter by the register get touched all day, and so do fitting room doors and glass cases. Those are the surfaces we wipe down and sanitize first. In an office, the kitchen and the restroom get dirty fastest when nobody keeps up with them. Clients and new hires notice those rooms when they walk through.

We are a woman owned business, and we come to you, whether that is a house off Ocean Park Boulevard or a shop on Main Street. For a store or an office, tell us how the space gets used when you ask for an estimate. A boutique with a busy fitting room needs different work than a quiet office with a few desks. Knowing that up front means the estimate matches the job you actually have.

Getting a price in Santa Monica

Call us at (310) 736-5266, or send us the details through this page and get your estimate online. Tell us what kind of place it is and about how big, and whether you want a standard cleaning or a deep clean. You get a free quote before anything is booked, so the price is settled before we show up. We work Monday through Saturday, from eight in the morning until six in the evening, and we are closed on Sunday.