We clean top to bottom every visit

Every visit covers the kitchen and bathrooms

Recurring house cleaning is regular upkeep for a home that people live in every day. Each time we come, we clean the kitchen and the bathrooms and dust through the house, and the floors come last. The kitchen and bathrooms get dirty fastest, because they see cooking and showers every day. Keeping them on a schedule means the house rarely falls far enough behind to need a deep clean.

In the kitchen we wipe the counters and backsplash and scrub the sink. Then the stovetop gets cleaned, along with the fronts of the appliances. The spot people forget is the cabinet doors and handles next to the stove. Cooking puts a thin layer of grease on everything within reach of the burners, and dust sticks to grease. Wiped every visit, it comes off with a cloth. Left for a couple of months, it turns tacky and brown, and then only hard scrubbing removes it.

Each bathroom gets the toilet cleaned inside and out, then the tub or shower, the sink and the mirror, and the floor last. The base of the toilet and the floor right behind it get extra attention, because that is where most bathroom smell comes from. A bathroom can look clean from the doorway and still smell off for that reason. Toothpaste on the mirror and hair in the corners are easy to see. The smell is what tells you a step was skipped.

• Kitchen counters, sink, stovetop and appliance fronts
• Toilet cleaned inside and out, base included
• Tub, shower, sink and mirror in each bathroom
• Dust wiped from shelves, sills, blinds and fans
• Carpets vacuumed, hard floors vacuumed and mopped

We dust first and do floors last

The order matters more than most people expect. Dust falls, so we start high with ceiling fan blades and the tops of door frames, then work down to shelves, sills, tabletops and counters. Dry work comes before wet work, because a damp cloth run over a dusty surface just makes a paste. If the order runs backward, the fan gets wiped after the floor is done, and the floor is dirty again before we leave.

Dust in Los Angeles is fine and dry, and it settles on every flat surface in the house. That means shelves, picture frames, window sills, blinds and the top of the fridge. Homes near a freeway or a busy boulevard also get a gray, sooty layer on the sills and blinds that face the street. A dry cloth pushes that soot around, so we use a damp cloth once the loose dust is off. Skip the blinds for a month and the slats turn gray from end to end.

Floors come last, because everything above them drops something. We vacuum carpets and rugs first and sweep or vacuum the hard floors. Then we mop. Mopping over grit just turns it into muddy streaks. On the original wood floors in older Craftsman and Spanish style homes, too much water raises the grain and dulls the finish. So wood gets a damp mop, never a wet one. The test is simple: the floor feels clean under bare feet, with no grit and no sticky spots by the sink.

Hard water leaves spots on bathroom fixtures

Los Angeles tap water is hard, which means it carries dissolved minerals that stay behind when the water dries. You see it as white spots on shower glass, a crust around the faucet, a chalky showerhead and a ring inside the toilet. On a regular schedule these come off easily. When they sit for months, the minerals build up in layers and bond to the glass and chrome. At that point the job is much bigger than a routine wipe.

The step that gets skipped most on hard water is waiting. Cleaning spray that is wiped straight off does little to mineral spots, because it needs a few minutes to soften them. So we spray the shower and the fixtures first and clean the sink and mirror while it works. Then we come back and scrub. The last step is drying the glass and chrome with a clean cloth, because water left to air dry puts the spots right back.

Moisture is the other bathroom problem, and how bad it gets depends on where you live. Near the coast in Santa Monica, the marine layer keeps the air damp, so a bathroom without a strong fan stays wet for hours. Mildew starts in the grout lines and along the caulk around the tub. Many older Los Angeles homes still have their original small tile, which means far more grout to watch. Wiping it down each visit helps keep mildew from starting, because once it stains the grout, regular cleaning will not lift it.

Wind blows dust into Los Angeles homes

When the Santa Ana winds blow in fall and winter, fine dust from the dry hills comes in through every gap in the house. Older homes with their original wood windows let in the most, and a house can go from clean to gritty in a couple of days. After a windy stretch we spend more of the visit on sills and window tracks. The floor just inside each door gets extra time too, because that is where the grit piles up first.

Many houses in Inglewood and Hawthorne are single story stucco homes with a sliding glass door to the backyard. The track under that door fills with dirt and pet hair, and once it packs down the door drags and stops sealing. We vacuum the door tracks on regular visits, because a track cleaned often takes a minute and a packed one takes much longer. Near the beach in Santa Monica, sand comes in on shoes and towels all year. Most of it ends up on the entry floor and the rugs by the door.

Most of the year the air here is dry, and dry dust stays light enough to float. Every time the air conditioning or a ceiling fan runs, it gets stirred up and lands again somewhere else. That is why the vent covers turn gray and fuzzy so quickly in Los Angeles homes. We dust the vent covers we can reach on each visit, because a clean room with a dusty vent starts collecting dust again right away.

The first visit takes the longest

The first visit usually takes longer than the ones after it, because we are catching up on everything since the last thorough clean. Soap scum in the shower and grease around the stove take the most work that first time. After that, each visit is upkeep. The same rooms go faster on later visits, because nothing has had long enough to build up. If a visit gets skipped, the next one runs longer, because the dirt has had twice as long to settle.

How far apart the visits should be depends on the house and the people in it. In homes with pets, hair lands on floors and furniture every day. With small children, the kitchen floor and the bathroom sink get messy fast. A quiet house with one or two adults can go longer between visits. We talk it through with you when you call and set the schedule around how the house is actually used.

You get the most from a visit when the time goes to cleaning instead of picking up. Clear the kitchen counters and get clothes and toys off the floors before we arrive, and we can reach the surfaces underneath. A sink full of dishes cannot be scrubbed, and a floor covered in things only gets cleaned around them. If one spot always bothers you, like the grout by the tub, tell us. We will know to check it on every visit.