We clean top to bottom, floors last

Deep cleaning covers what regular visits skip

A regular cleaning keeps the surfaces you touch every day in shape. Counters and floors get done, and the bathroom gets a quick scrub. What that visit never reaches is the layer that builds up slowly where nobody looks. Think of the tops of door frames, or the grout behind the toilet. A deep clean goes after that layer on purpose, and the time for it is set aside before we walk in the door.

In the kitchen, that means the range hood and the backsplash behind the stove, where cooking steam leaves a sticky film that holds dust. It also means the switch plates and cabinet handles that get touched all day. In the bathroom, the grout and the soap scum on tile and glass get scrubbed. Everywhere else, baseboards and door frames get wiped by hand, and the floors get cleaned under the furniture we can move.

You can tell a real deep clean by running a finger along the top of a door frame afterward. Your finger comes away clean. A rushed job looks fine from the middle of the room, because the surfaces you see got done and the edges did not. The edges are the whole point. Dust left on a baseboard or inside a heater cover gets carried back into the room every time the heat comes on. Skip it, and the house looks dusty again within days.

• Baseboards and door frames wiped by hand
• Baseboard heaters and vent covers vacuumed
• Kitchen grease cut off cabinets and hood
• Bathroom grout and soap scum scrubbed
• Floors cleaned under furniture we can move

The order of the work matters

We start high and work down, because dust falls. Cobwebs in the ceiling corners and the dust on fan blades come off first. Then we wipe the tops of cabinets and door frames, and after that the trim along the walls. Floors are always last. If the floors get done first, everything knocked loose above them lands on a clean floor, and the room has to be done twice.

Dry work comes before wet work. We dust and vacuum before anything gets sprayed. A damp cloth on a dusty baseboard turns the dust into gray paste and pushes it into the corners. In the bathroom, the cleaner goes on the tile and glass early and sits while we work somewhere else. Soap scum lets go after a soak. Scrubbing hard at dry scum takes much longer and can leave the glass scratched.

The kitchen is where the order matters most. Grease on cabinet doors near the stove is sticky, so dust lands on it and stays. We cut the grease first, then dry the doors by hand so they do not streak. Our products are non-toxic and eco-friendly, which is what you want on the surfaces where food gets made. The floor comes last, after every crumb from the counters and cabinet tops has already fallen onto it.

Massachusetts weather gets inside the house

From late fall into spring, most houses around Canton are shut tight. The heat runs for months with the windows closed, so the same air gets pushed around all winter. Dust that would have gone out an open window settles on every flat surface instead. Houses with forced hot air blow it through the ducts and out the vent covers. That is why the wall above a floor register often has a gray shadow on it by March.

Then there is what comes in on boots. Massachusetts roads get sand and salt all winter, and it rides into the house on every pair of shoes. Salt leaves a white crust on hardwood and tile near the door. Sand grinds into the floor finish like sandpaper each time someone walks over it. Mopping with plain water just spreads the salt thinner. A deep clean works it out of the grout and the floor seams at every entry, where it piles up worst.

Summer brings the opposite problem. Humid air hangs in bathrooms with a weak fan or no fan at all. Mildew starts in the grout and in the caulk along the tub, and it shows up first as gray specks in the corners. Wiping the specks off leaves the growth underneath, so it comes back within weeks. We disinfect those spots instead of only wiping them. If a caulk line has gone black under the surface, scrubbing will not fix it, and we will tell you it needs replacing.

Canton houses collect dust in different places

Canton has a real mix of houses. Near the center there are antique colonials and old farmhouses. Farther out it is mostly Capes, ranches, split-levels and garrison colonials built after the war. Each one collects dust in its own places. A Cape has built-ins and sloped ceilings upstairs, and dust sits on the ledge where the slanted ceiling meets the short wall. A split-level has short flights of stairs between floors, and grit packs into the edge of every tread.

The older houses take the most time. Their trim is deeper, with grooves and ridges that hold dust a flat modern baseboard never would. Cast-iron radiators have narrow gaps between the sections, and a regular duster barely reaches in. We clean them with a long, thin brush. Wide pine floorboards have cracks between them that fill with dirt over the years. Those get vacuumed with a narrow tool before a damp mop goes anywhere near the floor.

Many houses around Canton have hot water baseboard heat, the long metal covers along the bottom of the walls. Inside each cover is a row of thin metal fins, and they catch dust and pet hair all year. When the heat first comes on in the fall, that dust burns a little. It is the burnt smell people notice on the first cold night. We lift the covers where they come off easily and vacuum the fins clean. The next time the heat comes on, the room does not smell burnt.