We clean grout and baseboards by hand

A deep clean starts at the ceiling

A deep clean runs from the top of the room to the floor, because dirt falls. We start with ceiling fan blades, the tops of door frames, vent covers and light fixtures, then work down to shelves and window sills. Baseboards come near the end, and the floor is last. Clean in another order and dust from the fan lands on a mopped floor, so the same tile gets cleaned twice.

Dry work comes before wet work. We dust and vacuum first, and that includes the carpet edges and corners a vacuum head misses. Only then does a damp cloth or mop come out. Wipe a dusty baseboard with a wet rag and you get gray paste packed into the seam where the board meets the floor. That gray line is what you see in a house that gets cleaned often but never deeply.

You can check the work yourself. Run a finger along the top of a door frame, and it should come away clean. Look down the length of a baseboard from one end and the paint color should be even, with no dark band along the bottom. Switch plates and door handles should feel smooth rather than tacky. Those are the spots a regular clean skips, and they are the whole point of a deep one.

• Ceiling fan blades and vent covers dusted
• Baseboards wiped by hand in every room
• Shower and tub grout scrubbed with a brush
• Cabinet fronts and handles degreased
• Soap scum and mineral crust cleared from glass

Kitchen grease collects where nobody wipes

Cooking puts a fine mist of oil in the air, and it settles on every surface near the stove. On its own it is hard to see. Then dust lands on it and sticks. After a few months, the cabinet doors beside the range feel tacky and look darker than the ones across the room. The range hood and the top of the refrigerator collect the same film, and nobody sees it there.

Wiping grease with a wet sponge only spreads it thinner, and the streaks show when light hits the door. We put on a degreaser and give it a few minutes to loosen the film. Then it comes off with a clean cloth, and the surface gets dried so nothing is left to catch dust. Handles and door edges get the most attention, because that is where hands and cooking oil meet.

Kitchens in older Los Angeles houses often have painted wood cabinets with many coats of paint on them. Strong cleaners and scouring pads can dull that paint, so painted doors get a milder cleaner and a soft cloth. Tile countertops, common in older bungalows and Spanish-style homes around the city, hold grease in the grout lines. Those lines get a brush, since a cloth rides right over them.

Bathroom grout holds soap and hard water

Los Angeles tap water carries a lot of dissolved minerals. Every time a shower dries, it leaves a thin white crust on the glass and tile, and soap sticks to that crust. Over time the two build into a cloudy layer that a spray and a paper towel will not touch. On a glass shower door it looks like fog that never clears. Faucets and shower heads get the same crust around their edges.

Grout is porous, so it soaks up soap and body oil, and in a damp room mildew grows in it. That is why the lines on a shower floor turn gray or brown while the tile stays white. We scrub grout with a stiff brush and a cleaner made for it, then rinse the wall well. Cleaner left in the grout turns sticky as it dries and pulls in dirt faster than before.

Near the coast in Santa Monica, the marine layer brings damp, gray mornings, and bathrooms there stay humid longer. Mildew shows up in the caulk around the tub. Inland, the bigger problem is mineral crust. Many older homes around the city still have their original small tiles, with far more grout on every wall than a newer bathroom. When a stain has soaked all the way into the grout or caulk, we will tell you. Cleaning lightens it, but getting it white again may take new grout or new caulk.

Dry winds push fine dust into homes

Southern California gets little rain for most of the year, so dust never gets washed out of the air. When the Santa Ana winds blow in from the desert, they push fine grit through gaps around windows and under doors. It piles up in window tracks and on the slats of blinds. A regular clean gets the dust you can see on a table, but it rarely reaches those tracks.

Homes near the freeways get a second kind of dirt. Traffic leaves a black, oily soot on outside sills, and it works its way onto the inside ones. It smears if a wet cloth touches it first. We vacuum window and sliding door tracks with a narrow tool before anything else. Grit packed into the corners gets loosened with a brush, and then the track is wiped clean. Aluminum sliders, common in the older apartment buildings around Los Angeles, collect grit fastest.

Fire season brings ash, even when the fire itself is far away. It drifts indoors and lands as a light gray film on sills and floors. Ash should be picked up dry, with a vacuum or a dry microfiber cloth, before anything wet touches it. Water turns it into a gray smear that spreads and can stain light grout or unsealed stone. Heavy smoke damage inside walls or ducts is a different job, and we will say so if that is what we find.

Older homes need gentler cleaning methods

Many houses around Los Angeles are older wood-frame homes, stucco outside with original oak floors inside. Those floors often carry an old finish that water can dull, especially at the seams between boards. We clean hardwood with a barely damp mop and do not leave standing water on it. A soaking wet mop is how old floors end up with gray, cupped edges along the boards.

Baseboards and door trim in older homes have been painted many times, and the oldest layers can be chalky or chipped. Scrubbing hard with a rough pad takes paint off along with the dirt. On painted wood we use a soft cloth and a mild cleaner. Each pass is short, so water does not soak into bare spots. If paint is already flaking, we clean around it and point it out to you.

Marble and other natural stone react to acid. The mineral removers that clear shower glass can etch a marble counter in one pass. The dull spot they leave does not wipe off. Unglazed tile and old, soft grout need the same care. Before we use a cleaner on a surface we are not sure about, we test it on a small spot nobody sees. A quick test beats a dull patch in the middle of your bathroom floor.