Top down
Dust falls. Working high to low means nothing lands on a surface that has already been done, which is why a room cleaned in the wrong order needs doing twice.
A walk through the house.
Kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, living. Each room has its own products, its own cloth colour and its own order of work. Here is all of it.
- Four rooms
- Colour-coded cloths
- Sealed HEPA vacuums
The order matters more than the products.
Dry before wet
Dust dry first, then wet-clean. Spraying a dusty surface makes mud, and mud is what leaves the streaks people blame on the product.
Bathrooms last
Each zone finishes in its bathroom, with red and yellow cloths that never leave the room. Nothing travels from a toilet to a counter, ever.
Kitchen
Where the grease is, and where cross-contamination matters most
- 45 to 70 minutes
- Green cloths
The kitchen is cleaned green, start to finish, and nothing that has been in a bathroom comes near it. Surfactant and friction do the work on grease. Food-contact surfaces are washed and then rinsed with clean water, because a residue you eat off is worse than the soil it replaced.
In a Portland house. In a Portland kitchen the usual surprise is the window frame. Winter condensation on single glazing feeds mould in the corner of the sash, and it wipes off far more easily at week two than at month six.
What comes out of the caddy
Every visit
- Counters cleared, wiped and rinsed, then the things put back
- Sink and drain, taps descaled, and the stainless dried so it does not spot
- Cooktop, splashback and the front and handles of every appliance
- Outside of cabinetry, with attention to the handle zone where hands land
- Microwave interior, and the toaster tray emptied
- Floor vacuumed with HEPA filtration, then damp-mopped along the boards
Bathroom
The room with its own cloths, its own order and its own chemistry
- 30 to 50 minutes each
- Red and yellow cloths
Bathrooms are done last in each zone, with red cloths for the toilet and yellow for everything else. Red never touches anything but the toilet, and neither colour leaves the room. Scale comes off with a citric and lactic acid descaler rather than anything chlorinated.
In a Portland house. Between October and April a Portland bathroom is damp for months at a time. The single most useful thing we do here is clean and check the extractor fan cover, because a blocked fan is the difference between a bathroom that dries and one that grows.
What comes out of the caddy
Every visit
- Toilet inside and out, including the hinges, the base and the wall behind it
- Shower or tub, glass descaled, and the door track cleared
- Tile and grout wiped, with oxygen paste on grout during a deep clean
- Sink, taps, and the mirror finished with deionised water so it does not streak
- Extractor fan cover wiped, which matters more in Portland than anywhere
- Floor washed by hand along the edges, where a mop never quite reaches
Bedrooms
Eight hours a night of breathing whatever is in the air
- 20 to 30 minutes each
- Blue cloths
Bedrooms are about dust, not dirt. Dusting runs high to low so nothing lands on a surface already done, and the vacuum is a sealed HEPA machine so what it picks up does not come back out of the exhaust. Fragrance-free is the default here even for clients who like scent elsewhere.
In a Portland house. Alder pollen starts in February here and grass follows in May, and both find their way onto sills and into carpet. In pollen season we add sills and window tracks to the bedroom rotation without being asked.
What comes out of the caddy
Every visit
- Dusted top down: fan blades, frames, shelves, sills, then skirting
- Beds made, or linens changed if you leave fresh ones out
- Under-bed vacuumed wherever the frame allows it
- Mirrors, glass and any screen wiped dry, not sprayed
- Floors vacuumed to the edge, with the crevice tool along skirting
- Bins emptied and wiped
Living areas
Original floors, and the traffic that wears them
- 30 to 45 minutes
- Blue cloths
Most Portland living rooms have a hundred-year-old fir or oak floor with a finish that is somewhere between fine and tired. We test how the finish takes moisture before we mop, and if it is worn we vacuum more and wet less. Soft furnishings get vacuumed, not sprayed.
In a Portland house. If the floor is original and the finish is worn through in the traffic lane, we will say so and stop mopping that section. Pushing water into open grain is how a hundred-year-old board starts to cup.
What comes out of the caddy
Every visit
- Surfaces, shelves and electronics dusted dry, with screens left alone unless you ask
- Upholstery and cushions vacuumed, cushions turned
- Skirting, door frames and switch plates, on rotation
- Interior glass and any glass door
- Rugs vacuumed both directions, hard floor damp-mopped along the grain
- A last pass at eye height from the doorway, which is how a room is actually seen
And the things we will tell you to call somebody else about.
A cleaning company that says yes to everything is a cleaning company that will do at least one of those things badly. We keep referrals for every item on this list.
- Mould covering more than roughly ten square feet. That is a moisture problem and it needs a remediation contractor.
- Carpet and upholstery extraction. Different machine, different training, and most Portland leases require a separate receipt anyway.
- Post-construction dust. It needs negative air and different filtration, and doing it with domestic kit just moves the dust around.
- Exterior windows, gutters, roofs, and anything above a two-step ladder.
- Pest contamination, hoarding recovery and biohazard.
- Sanding, scraping or heat-stripping paint in a home built before 1978, which is regulated work.
Want a room added, or one left alone?
Every checklist here is a starting point. Tell us what matters in your house and we will write the version we actually work to.