We clean every room to a checklist

A deep clean starts at the ceiling

A deep clean is the visit that deals with everything a quick clean works around. We start with an assessment of the home so we know where the buildup sits, then work each room from the top down. Ceiling fan blades, the tops of door frames, air vents and the ledge above the kitchen cabinets come first. Whatever we knock loose up there falls onto the counters and floors below, so it has to come down before those get cleaned.

Then we work down the walls. Switch plates and door handles get wiped where hands leave a gray ring around the edges. In the kitchen the grease film comes off the cabinet doors beside the stove. We clean inside the microwave too, where splatter bakes onto the top. Baseboards are the last thing before the floors. Done right, they are one color again instead of dark along the top edge.

The order matters more than people expect. If the floors get mopped before the baseboards are wiped, the dust from the baseboards lands on a wet floor and dries as streaks. If the vents are skipped, the next time the air conditioning runs it blows that dust back onto furniture we just cleaned. A deep clean done out of order looks fine for a day, then looks like nobody came. Done in order, it holds. Camden Bryant put it this way in a Google review: "My place looked and smelled amazing after they finished."

• Ceiling fans and air vents dusted
• Baseboards and door frames wiped down
• Microwave and stovetop degreased
• Soap scum scrubbed off tubs and shower glass
• Floors vacuumed and mopped last

Summer humidity leaves mildew in bathroom grout

Summers around Morrisville are hot and damp, and the air stays heavy for months. A bathroom that never fully dries between showers is where that shows up first. Mildew settles into the grout low on the shower wall and along the caulk at the base of the tub. Soap scum builds on the shower glass until it looks frosted. An exhaust fan that runs for a minute and gets switched off does not keep up with it.

Getting that out takes time more than muscle. The cleaner has to sit on the soap scum long enough to soften it before anyone scrubs. The grout gets worked with a stiff brush along each line. Spray and wipe right away and the scum stays put. The grout stays dark too, and the bathroom smells clean for an afternoon while it still looks tired.

The damp reaches past the bathroom. Window sills and the tracks of sliding doors collect condensation and grime. The rubber seal on a fridge door can grow the same black spots you see in a shower. Those places are easy to miss on a quick clean. Mildew left in them spreads back out once the weather turns humid again, so a deep clean scrubs them and dries them.

Spring pollen and red clay come indoors

Every spring the pine pollen in Wake County turns cars and porches yellow for a few weeks. It does not stay outside. It comes in on shoes and through window screens on the first warm days. Then it settles as a fine yellow film on blinds and window sills. A quick dusting moves it around. A deep clean wipes each blind slat and the sill under it, then vacuums the carpet edge where the rest of it drifts.

The soil here is red clay, and it stains. It gets tracked in on shoes and pet paws and ground into the grout of a tile entry or the rug by the back door. Wiping a clay smear with a wet rag usually spreads it into a wider orange stain. It has to be loosened first and then lifted. On a deep clean the entry floor gets that treatment before the rest of the floors are touched.

Houses around here run the air conditioning hard from spring into fall. Return vents pull in dust and pollen, and supply vents grow a gray fuzz on their slats. Over time the ceiling around each vent picks up a dark shadow where the air hits it. We clean the vent covers we can reach and wipe that shadow off the ceiling. A room with dirty vents gets dusty again fast, no matter how well the rest was done.

Dust collects high in two-story homes

Most of Morrisville is newer construction: two-story wood-frame houses and townhomes built as Research Triangle Park grew. Many sit on a crawl space or a slab, with vinyl siding outside and carpet upstairs. The floor plans come with tall foyers and great rooms. The ceiling fan in a two-story great room can go a long time without anyone touching it, because nobody can reach it from the floor.

Dust on a fan blade that high does not stay there. Each time the fan turns it throws a little onto the sofa and the floor. That is why a room can look dusty a day after it was cleaned. On a deep clean the high fans and the ledges over tall windows get done first. Nothing underneath them gets touched until they are clean.

Closer to downtown Raleigh and in the older parts of Cary you see more brick ranch houses, some with original hardwood floors and small tiled bathrooms. Those get cleaned differently. Older grout is often porous and stained deep, and wood floors should never be flooded with water. We adjust how much water goes on the floor and what goes on the grout to fit the house we are standing in.