Category: Cleaning Tips

I get this question on almost every first call: what is the actual difference between a standard clean and a deep clean, and which one do I need? Here is the honest answer, not the upsell version.

What’s Included in a Standard Clean

A standard clean is maintenance. It assumes the house is already in reasonably good shape and keeps it that way. Kitchens and bathrooms get wiped down and disinfected, floors get vacuumed and mopped, counters get cleared and cleaned, beds get made, and the house gets tidied room by room. It is fast, it is consistent, and it is what most of my weekly and biweekly clients book.

What’s Included in a Deep Clean

A deep clean goes after everything a standard clean does not have time for: baseboards, window tracks, inside the fridge and oven, behind and under furniture, light fixtures, ceiling fans, cabinet fronts, grout, and detailed bathroom work like soap scum and hard water buildup. It takes longer because I am moving things and getting into spots that do not get touched week to week.

When You Actually Need One

• It has been more than a few months since the last real clean, or ever
• You are starting a new recurring schedule and want a clean baseline to maintain from
• You just moved in or are getting ready to move out
• You are hosting a big event or guests are staying for an extended visit
• Seasonal reset, usually spring or before the holidays

How Pricing Actually Works

A deep clean costs more than a standard clean because it takes more time and more attention to detail, not because it is a different service tier with extra fees attached. Most of my clients book one deep clean to start, then move to standard cleans on a recurring schedule to maintain that baseline. That combination is almost always cheaper over a year than booking deep cleans repeatedly, because a well-maintained house never falls back far enough to need one.

If you are not sure which one you need, tell me the last time the house got a real clean and what is bothering you most right now. That is usually enough for me to tell you straight.

Turnover cleaning is different than a regular house cleaning, and most hosts find that out the hard way. With a weekly client, if I miss a spot, they tell me next time. With an Airbnb, a guest misses nothing, and they leave it in the review. I run a different checklist for short-term rentals, built around speed and consistency, not just getting the place clean.

Why Turnover Cleaning Is Different

A standard clean has some flexibility built in. Turnover cleaning does not. Check-out is at 11, check-in is at 3, and the whole house has to be guest-ready in that window every single time, whether I have two hours or four. That means a fixed routine I can run the same way every visit, not a checklist I adjust based on how the house looks that day.

What I Actually Check Every Turnover

• Every bathroom: fresh towels, no hair in the drain or tub, toilet and mirror spotless
• Kitchen: fridge checked for anything left behind, counters wiped, dishwasher run and emptied
• Beds stripped, washed, and remade with tight corners, not just pulled straight
• Trash out and bins relined before I leave, every time
• A walk-through with fresh eyes at the door, because the last thing I see is the first thing the guest sees

The Small Things That Actually Tank a Review

It is seldom the big stuff. Guests do not usually complain about a streak on a window. They complain about a smell, a hair on the bathroom floor, or a sink full of dishes they assume were never washed. I treat smell and bathrooms as the two things I cannot get wrong, because those are the two things that show up in a one-star review.

Scheduling Around a Tight Turnaround

If you are self-managing a short-term rental in West Lake Hills, Barton Creek, or anywhere else in my service area, same-day turnaround is the part that usually breaks first. I hold recurring turnover slots for hosts so a late checkout or a same-day booking does not turn into a scramble. If you run more than one property, tell me your calendar pattern and I will build the schedule around it instead of you calling me every time a booking comes in.

Clients ask me all the time what I use, usually after they notice the house does not smell like bleach when I leave. I bring my own supplies, and everything in my caddy is organic and hypoallergenic. That is not a marketing line. I have a kid, I am in other people’s homes all day, and I got tired of headaches from fumes. Here is the actual list.

The core five

• Plant-based all-purpose spray. Counters, appliances, door handles, most surfaces. Look for one with no synthetic fragrance. If it smells like a candle, skip it.
• White vinegar. Hard water, glass, mineral spots, the inside of the kettle. Never on stone.
• Baking soda. A gentle scrub for sinks, tubs, and the inside of the oven. Mixed with a little water it makes a paste that lifts grime without scratching.
• Castile soap or a plant-based dish soap. Floors, stone counters, greasy stovetops. A few drops in warm water does more than people expect.
• Hydrogen peroxide (3%). My disinfectant for cutting boards, toilets, and grout. It breaks down into water and oxygen, so there is nothing left behind.

Tools matter more than products

Honestly, most of the cleaning is done by the cloth, not the spray. I use a stack of good microfiber cloths, color-coded so the bathroom cloth never touches the kitchen. A stiff grout brush, a non-scratch sponge, a squeegee, a HEPA vacuum, and a flat microfiber mop with washable pads. That is the whole kit.

Two things I stopped using

Bleach, except when a client specifically asks for it on grout. It is harsh on lungs, it yellows some surfaces, and peroxide does the job for everyday disinfecting. Anything with “fragrance” on the label, because that one word can hide dozens of chemicals and it is the most common trigger for the sensitive people I clean for.

If you have something you prefer

Some clients have a product they love, or a surface that needs a specific cleaner. Just tell me and I will use yours. The point is a clean house that is safe for the people and pets in it, not a particular brand.

I do a lot of move-out cleans, especially in late summer when leases turn over all across Austin. Property managers are not looking at whether the house feels clean. They walk through with a list, and they check the same spots every time. If you are doing the clean yourself, work from their list, not yours.

Kitchen

• Inside the oven. The number one deduction. Run the self-clean cycle the day before, then wipe out the ash. Do the racks in the tub with dish soap.
• Inside the fridge and freezer. Empty, wipe every shelf and drawer, pull it out and sweep behind it if you can. Leave the doors propped open if it is being turned off.
• Inside every cabinet and drawer. Crumbs in the silverware drawer get noticed.
• Range hood and filter. Grease builds up here and it is easy to forget.
• Dishwasher filter and the rubber seal.

Bathrooms

• Grout and caulk. Any pink or black mildew needs to be gone. This is the second most common deduction after the oven.
• Hard water on the shower glass and faucets. See my post on hard water spots for how.
• Exhaust fan cover. Pop it off and wash it. It is always dusty.
• Behind and around the toilet base.

Every room

• Baseboards. Damp cloth, whole house. Managers run a finger along them.
• Ceiling fans and light fixtures. Look up. They do.
• Window tracks and blinds. Vacuum the tracks, then wipe them. Wipe each blind slat.
• Light switches, door handles, and door frames. Fingerprints show on white paint.
• Closet shelves and the tops of door frames.
• Floors last. Vacuum, then mop, then do not walk on them.

Outside and extras

Sweep the garage and the patio, clean out the dryer vent, and take every last thing with you, including the stuff under the sink. An empty house should be empty.

What cleaning will not fix

Nail holes, scuffed paint, carpet stains that have set, and burned-out bulbs are repairs, not cleaning. Patch the holes with spackle, replace the bulbs, and be honest with yourself about carpet. If it has a stain you cannot lift, a professional carpet cleaner is usually cheaper than the deduction.

Take photos of every room when you are done. Time-stamped photos have settled more than one deposit argument. And if you would rather hand the whole thing off, a move-out clean is one of the services I do most.

The families I clean for are busy. Kids, dogs, two jobs, a commute on MoPac. Nobody has a free Saturday to deep clean, and honestly you should not need one. A house stays clean through small, regular habits, not big heroic efforts. Here is the routine I suggest to clients between my visits.

Every day (about 15 minutes total)

• Make the beds. Two minutes, and the bedroom instantly looks done.
• Run the dishwasher at night, empty it in the morning. A dirty sink is what makes a kitchen feel messy. If the dishwasher is empty, dishes go straight in.
• Wipe the kitchen counters and the stovetop after dinner. Crumbs and grease are easy tonight and hard on Friday.
• One load of laundry, start to finish. Washed, dried, and put away. One load a day never becomes a mountain.
• Ten-minute pickup before bed. Everyone grabs what is theirs. Set a timer. Kids do better with a timer than with nagging.

One thing per weekday

Instead of cleaning the whole house at once, give each day one job. Each takes 20 to 30 minutes.

• Monday: Bathrooms. Toilets, sinks, mirrors, a quick swipe of the shower.
• Tuesday: Dust. Top to bottom, damp cloth, one direction.
• Wednesday: Floors. Vacuum everywhere, mop the hard floors.
• Thursday: Kitchen deep-ish. Wipe cabinet fronts, clean the microwave, clear out old food from the fridge before trash day.
• Friday: Sheets and towels. Strip, wash, remake.

Once a month

Baseboards, ceiling fans, inside the oven, the window tracks, and under the couch cushions. If you have a regular cleaner, these are the things she should be rotating through for you. If you do not, put a reminder on the first Saturday of the month and knock out one or two.

The honest part

You will not do all of this every week, and that is fine. The daily habits matter most. If you only keep the sink empty, the counters wiped, and the ten-minute pickup, your house will feel 80 percent handled. The rest is what a cleaner every two weeks is for.

Austin’s water comes out of limestone, which means it carries a lot of dissolved minerals. When water dries, the minerals stay behind as white, chalky spots. You see it on shower doors, around faucets, on the tile, and inside the kettle. It is not dirt, so regular cleaner does not touch it. You need something acidic to dissolve it.

The one product that does most of the work

Plain white vinegar. It is cheap, it is safe around kids and pets, and it dissolves mineral deposits. The trick is contact time. Spraying and wiping does nothing. The vinegar has to sit on the spots for at least ten minutes, sometimes an hour for heavy buildup.

Shower glass

• Warm the vinegar slightly (30 seconds in the microwave) and spray the glass generously.
• Wait 15 minutes. Spray again if it starts to dry.
• Scrub with a non-scratch sponge. For stubborn glass, make a paste of baking soda and a little vinegar and rub in circles.
• Rinse and squeegee. Then keep a squeegee in the shower and use it after every shower. Thirty seconds a day means you never have to do the deep version again.

Faucets and shower heads

Soak a paper towel in vinegar, wrap it around the base of the faucet, and leave it for 30 minutes. For a shower head, fill a small bag with vinegar, tie it over the head so it is submerged, and leave it an hour. The crust wipes off afterward. If the finish is brushed nickel or oil-rubbed bronze, cut the vinegar with equal parts water and do not leave it as long, because strong acid can dull those finishes.

Tile and grout

Ceramic and porcelain tile can take vinegar. Spray, wait, scrub with a stiff brush along the grout lines, rinse well. If the grout has gone gray or orange, that is usually mildew rather than minerals, and it needs a different approach. I do that as an add-on if you want it handled.

Never put vinegar on natural stone

This is the one that costs people money. Granite, marble, travertine, and limestone are all etched by acid. Vinegar, lemon, and most “bathroom” cleaners will leave permanent dull patches. On stone, use a cleaner made for stone or just warm water and a drop of dish soap, and dry it right away so spots do not form in the first place. If you are not sure what your counters are made of, treat them like stone until you know.

Prevention beats scrubbing every time. Wipe faucets dry after use, squeegee the glass, and hard water becomes a non-issue.

If you have lived in Austin through a winter, you know the drill. Sometime in December the mountain cedar starts releasing pollen, and by January there is a yellow film on every car, windowsill, and coffee table in town. I clean through cedar season every year, and these are the things that actually make a difference inside the house.

Stop it at the door

Most of the pollen in your house walked in. Shoes off at the door is the single biggest thing you can do, and a good doormat outside plus a washable rug inside catches most of the rest. If you have a dog that goes outside, keep an old towel by the door and wipe paws and coat before they come in. Dogs are pollen sponges.

Change your air filter more often than you think

Your HVAC filter is doing more work in January than it does all summer. During cedar season I tell clients to change it every month, not every three. A pleated filter rated MERV 11 to 13 catches pollen; the cheap blue fiberglass ones do not. Keep the fan running on “on” instead of “auto” on bad days so the air keeps cycling through the filter even when the heat is not running.

Dust damp, not dry

A dry duster or a feather duster just moves pollen into the air so it can land somewhere else. Use a slightly damp microfiber cloth and wipe in one direction. Rinse it often. Work top to bottom: ceiling fan blades, then shelves, then tables, then baseboards, then floors. If you vacuum first and dust second, you are doing it twice.

Vacuum with a HEPA filter, and go slow

A vacuum without a sealed HEPA filter blows fine pollen straight back out the exhaust. If yours does not have one, it is worth the upgrade for anyone in the house with allergies. Go slowly on carpet, overlapping each pass, and do not forget under the bed and the couch cushions.

Wash bedding weekly, in hot water

You spend a third of your life with your face on your pillow. During cedar season, wash sheets and pillowcases every week in the hottest water the fabric allows, and shower before bed if you have been outside. It sounds like a lot, but it is the difference between waking up stuffy and waking up fine.

Keep the windows closed on high-count days

Austin gives us a few beautiful 70-degree days in January and it is tempting to open everything up. Check the pollen count first. Cedar peaks in the morning, so if you must air out the house, do it in the late afternoon.

None of this requires special products. It is mostly about doing the ordinary things a little more often for about eight weeks. If you would rather not, that is what I am here for.