San Francisco home cleaning services
Cleaning services in San Francisco, sorted by what the home needs
A cleaning service in San Francisco covers different jobs, and the first thing to settle is which one your place needs. Each page below covers one kind of cleaning: who the home belongs to, what the visit covers, and what to say on the first call.
Which cleaning fits your home
Regular cleaning
A maid service is the standard visit on request or on a schedule: dusting from the floor, kitchen counters and the sink, the bathrooms, the floors last. The rooms you name and how often you want them touched are settled on the call.
A weekly or every other week schedule is the same job on a rhythm, so the place does not drift between visits. Monthly is on the same page. The rhythm takes care of what used to need remembering.
A one time cleaning is a cleaning with no schedule after it, for guests arriving on Friday, a party on Saturday or a week that got away from you. The visit still starts with a walk-through and ends with a last look if you are home.
A green cleaning request is settled on the call with the products you want used, or with ones you name. SF Environment points to Green Seal, EcoLogo and the EPA's Safer Choice; the City also keeps its own SF Approved list. The green cleaning page explains what the City's guidance says and what to ask any company that uses the word.
Bigger cleans
A deep cleaning reaches what a regular visit skips: baseboards, cabinet fronts, grout, inside the oven and fridge, the tops of light fixtures. It is the right first visit after a long gap, or before a schedule starts.
A cleaning after a remodel is a different job again, done once the trades have left. Drywall and sanding dust is not grease and does not come off the way grease does. It is a dust job rather than a grease job, and it reaches surfaces a regular visit does not touch.
Moves, apartments and rentals
Move-out cleaning is a cleaning in an empty unit; move-in cleaning is on the same page. Cabinets, drawers, closets, sills, bathrooms and floors all open up when nothing is in the way, so a move-out reaches shelves a regular visit never sees.
Apartment cleaning is the same work in a studio, a one-bedroom or a condo, where getting through the lobby and the elevator is as much of the job as the cleaning. You tell us on the call what your building asks of a vendor at the front door and up to the floor.
Short-term hosts need turnovers between guests that reset the kitchen, the bath and the surfaces a visitor touched. Anything left behind is noticed and flagged for the host.
When you are not sure
Call and tell us about the place. The rooms and bathrooms, how long since the last thorough visit, the building, the stairs or the elevator and how we get in, pets, what matters most to you, and products you want used or avoided. From there we can say whether a maid service is the job or a deep clean comes first, and point you to the matching page. A regular visit fits a home kept up between cleanings; a deep clean goes on the plan when the home has gotten past what a standard visit can handle. The guide on what a cleaning covers is a good read beforehand.
San Francisco homes
About 66 percent of the city's renter households live in buildings of five or more units, and about 39 percent of owner households live in detached houses. On the first call, the resident tells us how a cleaner gets to the front door, so the day of the visit does not open with a surprise.
Rentals between tenants
These pages describe the homes. For a rental between tenants, a landlord or property manager describes the unit, the keys, the building and whether the carpets, the paint or anything else is being handled by other trades first. We clean what you describe, and the price is agreed before any work starts. No promise about any lease.
What we leave to other trades
We clean homes. Carpet and upholstery cleaning, outside windows above the ground floor, pressure washing, duct cleaning, mold work, pest treatment, junk hauling and cleanouts, hoarding and biohazard work, laundry service and taking away a customer's old cleaning products are different jobs that take different training. If one of those is what your home needs, telling us saves a visit. The home itself may still need a cleaning before or after the specialist comes through, and that part is a page we can take up on the same call.
Picking the right page before you call
Follow a service link above for the longer description, or call (415) 704-7703 and tell us about the home. The cost guide and the questions worth asking any cleaner are useful reading beforehand, and what happens after you call covers the start.