A regular visit keeps a clean home clean
A regular visit holds the ground a thorough clean has already won. In the kitchen, that is counters, the sink, the stovetop and the outside of the appliances. In each bathroom, the tub or shower, the toilet, the sink and the mirror. Dusting runs top down over surfaces the household uses day to day, and the floors come last. A standard cleaning is the longer list, room by room. Nothing on a regular visit climbs; anything high is dusted from the floor and anything out of reach stays alone.
What the regular pass does well is maintenance. It keeps the kitchen counter level, keeps hair off the bathroom floor, and keeps dust from reaching the shelf of the glasses on a Sunday. It does not catch the layer sitting under those surfaces, because the layer under those surfaces was not put there this week.
What a deep clean reaches that a regular pass does not
A deep clean picks up the layer a regular visit passes over. Grout where it has darkened in a shower, the baseboards from end to end, the tops of cabinets dusted from the floor, blinds one slat at a time, the inside of the windows that open from the inside, switch plates, door frames and the floor of each closet. The inside of the oven and the inside of the fridge come in as asks on the call. A deep cleaning service sets its scope on that layer rather than the top one.
In a home that has gone some stretch without a thorough clean, there is more of the deep layer than one standard pass can carry, which is why the two visits run on different lists.
Why the first visit is often the deep one
For a home starting on a routine, the first visit usually makes more sense as a deep house cleaning before the schedule begins. The baseboards behind the headboard, the ledge above the shower door and the sill in the room farthest from the entry have not been attended to since someone last felt like crawling after them.
Starting with a deep visit sets the baseline that regular maid service can hold. From there, weekly or every other week visits keep the deep layer from climbing back faster than the household uses the home. The exception is a home that was recently cleaned top to bottom by the household; in that case, a regular first visit is often enough.
Where the difference shows most: kitchens and bathrooms
Two rooms account for most of the gap between a regular pass and a deeper one. In a kitchen, the deep pass adds the hood over the stove, the cabinet fronts and the reachable front edge under the appliances with the appliances left in place.
Bathrooms are the other half. The regular pass handles the tub, the sink and the toilet; the deep pass adds the grout at the seams, the soap on the glass, the baseboards behind the door and the small gap behind the toilet.
| Area | Regular visit | Deep visit |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen counters and sink | Wiped, dried, sink scrubbed | Same, with the toaster, the kettle and the base of the faucet included |
| Stove and hood | Stovetop wiped, drip pans wiped | Grates lifted when they free, the hood face and underside, the back of the burner |
| Fridge, inside | Not included | Shelves pulled, interior wiped, seals cleaned, by ask |
| Oven, inside | Not included | Rack by rack, by ask |
| Shower tile and glass | Tile wiped, soap removed | Grout seams worked, film on glass addressed |
| Dusting | Reachable surfaces top down | Cabinet tops from the floor, blinds slat by slat, switch plates, door frames |
| Floors | Vacuumed, hard floors damp mopped | Same, closets, under light furniture that moves easily, the corner behind the door |
Trim, edges and the places nobody looks
The places that read as dust-free on a regular visit are the places the eye lands. The baseboard in the hallway behind the chair, the top edge of the molding over the kitchen door, the sill of the bay window in the front room, and the back of the toilet floor collect what nothing above them keeps picking up. A deep pass is a search over these edges.
Edges differ from room to room: the cabinet front at the handle and the trim where the counter meets the wall in a kitchen, the baseboard behind the door and the gap where the toilet meets the floor in a bathroom. Bedrooms add the inside of the window sashes that open and the shelf below the window frame. A deep visit covers more of these edges in one go than a regular visit was built to touch.
San Francisco's older housing stock
The median San Francisco home was built in 1946, and about 45 percent of the city's housing units were built in 1939 or earlier. When you call about an older apartment or house, say what the home has that a newer one would not.
How to tell which one to ask for
Which cleaning to ask for comes from a read of your own apartment or house: where the dust shows. Look at the top of a door frame, the baseboard behind a chair, the inside of a shower-door track, the top edge of the hood over the stove and the window sill in the room farthest from the entry. A fine gray film on more than one of these puts the home ahead of a deep clean. If those spots look near-even with the rooms around them, a regular visit is holding the line.
Say what you see when you call, and we work out which service the plan routes to. What moves the price is useful before the call.