We clean every room ceiling to floor

A deep clean reaches the hidden buildup

Regular cleaning keeps up with the surfaces you see every day. A deep clean goes after everything else, and it has to happen in order. We start high and work down in every room. Dust from the ceiling fan and the tops of door frames falls onto floors we have not cleaned yet. Light fixtures and vent covers come next, then switch plates and baseboards. Floors are last.

Kitchens and bathrooms take the most time. In the kitchen, cooking grease settles on cabinet fronts and the range hood, and dust sticks to it. We put a green cleaner on the grease and let it sit before we wipe, because wiping grease too soon just smears it around. In the bathroom, soap scum builds up on shower walls and glass doors. Grout darkens first near the bottom of the shower, where water sits longest, so we scrub it by hand with a stiff brush.

You can check a deep clean with one finger. Run it along the top of a baseboard or a door frame, and it should come away clean. Grout that was only dirty goes back to its own color. Grout that is deeply stained or cracked will not, and we will tell you so instead of pretending. At the end we walk each room and look at it from the doorway, the way you will when you get home.

• Every room dusted from the ceiling down
• Baseboards and door frames wiped by hand
• Shower and floor grout scrubbed with a brush
• Grease cleaned off cabinet fronts and range hood
• Vent covers and ceiling fan blades cleaned

Humid summers and spring pollen add buildup

Summers in the Piedmont are long and humid, and the air stays damp well into the fall. A bathroom that never dries out between showers is where mildew starts. You see it as gray or black specks along the caulk line and in the grout near the floor. Wiping the surface takes the color off for a few days, but the growth is still down in the grout, so it comes right back.

On a deep clean we put a green cleaner on the grout and caulk and let it sit long enough to work. Then we scrub each joint with a stiff brush. We rinse the walls and dry them, because leftover residue holds moisture and gives mildew something to feed on. Caulk with mildew growing inside it cannot be cleaned. We will point it out so you know the tub needs new caulk, which is a repair, not a cleaning job.

Pollen is the other local problem. Every spring, pine pollen turns cars and porches around Kernersville yellow for weeks. It comes inside on shoes and through open windows. It settles on window sills and blind slats, and it packs into the tracks of sliding doors. Red clay gets tracked in all year, and it works its way into the grout on entry and kitchen floors. A spring deep clean gets both out before they build up.

Older and newer homes get dirty differently

Many Kernersville homes are brick ranches over a crawl space, and a lot of them have floor vents instead of ceiling vents. Floor vents catch crumbs, pet hair, dust and whatever rolls off a table. We lift the covers that come up and vacuum inside the opening as far as we can reach. The covers get washed before they go back down. In summer these houses can also smell musty in closets and under sinks. If that smell comes from the crawl space, no amount of cleaning inside the house will fix it, and we will say so.

The newer subdivisions around Kernersville are full of two-story homes with open floor plans and tall family room ceilings. The dust problem in those houses is height. Ledges in the foyer and plant shelves above the kitchen cabinets hold a gray layer nobody sees from below. So do the tops of tall windows and the blades of a ceiling fan high over the couch. Those get dusted first, because whatever comes off them lands on the furniture and floors underneath.

Floors differ too. Older homes often have original hardwood, and newer ones tend to have vinyl plank or tile. Hardwood gets a damp mop, never a wet one, because standing water gets into the seams and makes the boards swell. Vinyl plank can take more water but shows every streak, so we follow the mop with a dry pass. On tile floors the grout gets scrubbed, since that is where kitchen grease and red clay end up.

A rushed deep clean does not last

The step people skip most is waiting. A cleaner needs time on the surface to loosen grease or soap scum. Green products usually need a bit more of that time than harsh chemicals do. If you spray and wipe right away, you move the film around instead of lifting it. We put the cleaner on, then work on another spot in the same room while it sits. That way the wait does not stretch the visit.

Rinsing is the next step that gets cut. Any cleaner left on a surface dries into a thin, sticky layer. New dirt clings to that layer faster than to a bare surface. On floors it shows up as a dull haze, and footprints appear the next day. So we rinse what needs rinsing, then dry faucets and shower glass with a clean cloth. Drying is what keeps water spots from forming.

Then there are the spots nobody checks. A fast clean never gets to the floor behind the toilet or the gap between the stove and the counter. The top of the refrigerator and the track of a sliding shower door get missed too. Those hidden spots are where odors and ants usually start. They are a big part of why a deep clean takes longer than a regular visit.

We use green products around your family

A deep clean puts more product on more surfaces than any other visit, so what is in the bottle matters more. Take Care Cleaning uses safe, green products that protect your family and pets. That counts when a toddler crawls across the kitchen floor right after we mop it. It also counts in summer, when most houses here stay closed up with the air conditioning running and fumes have nowhere to go.

We clean for seniors as well as families, and a deep clean in a senior's home has its own priorities. Bathroom floors and tub edges get rinsed and dried so nothing is left slick underfoot. Grab bars and stair railings get wiped down, because hands are on them all day. Strong cleaning smells are hard on anyone with breathing trouble, and that is one more reason we stick with green products.

Green products do ask more of the person cleaning. They take longer to work on heavy grease and soap scum, so we do more of the work by hand. That is the trade we make on every visit. The house still comes out clean, and nobody in it spends the evening smelling bleach. If you work from home, you can stay at your desk while we clean the rest of the house.