A regular house cleaning covers the surfaces you live with: floors, kitchen counters and appliance fronts, bathrooms, dusting and trash. A deep clean adds the details regular visits skip, like baseboards, vents and cabinet fronts, and a move-out clean adds the inside of the cabinets, closets and appliances. Carpet shampooing, upholstery and organizing aren’t part of any of them.
What’s included in each type of house cleaning?
Each level includes everything in the one before it, and adds more detail.
| Regular | Deep clean | Move-out | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dust all reachable surfaces | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Vacuum and mop every floor | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Kitchen counters, sink and appliance fronts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bathrooms: toilets, tubs, showers and mirrors | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Make beds and tidy common areas | Yes | Yes | |
| Empty trash and replace liners | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Baseboards, door frames and light switches | Yes | Yes | |
| Vent covers and ceiling fan blades | Yes | Yes | |
| Kitchen cabinet fronts, inside the microwave | Yes | Yes | |
| Interior windows within reach | Yes | ||
| Inside every cabinet and drawer | Yes | ||
| Inside the refrigerator and oven | Yes | ||
| Closets and shelving | Yes | ||
| Three-bedroom house, average condition | $115 to $150 every two weeks | $240 to $310 | $315 to $400 |
The full lists are on the recurring, deep cleaning and move-out pages.
What does a regular house cleaning include?
The rooms you use every day, cleaned the same way every visit: floors vacuumed and mopped, kitchen counters, sink and appliance fronts wiped, bathrooms cleaned top to bottom, reachable surfaces dusted, beds made and trash taken out.
What a regular visit doesn’t do is catch up on buildup. Baseboards, vent covers, ceiling fans and the film that collects on cabinet fronts are deep-clean work. That’s why most recurring plans start with a deep clean, and why a home that’s already been kept up can start straight with regular visits. Deep clean or recurring cleaning: which one first? covers how to tell.
What can you add to a cleaning?
The inside of the oven, the refrigerator and the cabinets, detailed blinds, and areas like a sunroom, a porch, a home gym or the garage. These are added to a visit at a set price, and you choose them in the estimator before you see your range.
A finished basement is priced on its own, by size, because it’s a whole extra floor. It’s also the part of the house people most often forget to mention.
What isn’t included in a house cleaning?
Anything that’s a separate trade or a separate kind of work. A house cleaning keeps a home clean; it doesn’t restore materials, repair things or reorganize them.
We don’t do:
- Carpet shampooing or steam cleaning. Carpets get vacuumed on every visit; deep carpet cleaning is a specialist job.
- Upholstery cleaning. Couches and chairs get vacuumed and wiped, not shampooed.
- Organizing. Cleaners work around what’s on a shelf or a counter. Sorting closets and decluttering is a different service.
- Exterior work. Gutters, siding and outside window washing from ladders. Window tracks and sills inside can be added on request, and the outside of the glass on windows that open inward and can be reached safely.
After a remodel, the fine dust that settles on every surface needs its own process, which is why post-construction cleaning is a separate service.
How do you make sure you get what you’re paying for?
Get the checklist before the first visit, and tell your cleaners what matters most to you. A clear scope is the difference between a cleaning that meets expectations and one that leaves you wondering about the baseboards.
Two things help most. Keep the same day of the week, so the same two cleaning professionals come every time and learn your home. And if something isn’t right, say so: every cleaning comes with our satisfaction guarantee, and we’ll work with you to make it right.
The estimator shows what your home’s cleaning would cost, with any add-ons, in about a minute.
