We clean the places regular cleaning skips

A deep cleaning begins at the ceiling

A deep cleaning is one long visit for a house that has gotten away from you. Work took over, or a whole season went by with nothing but quick pickups. A regular cleaning keeps up with the counters and floors you use every day. A deep cleaning goes after the layer underneath. That means dust on the fan blades, grime along the baseboards, film on the shower glass and the dark line in the grout.

We work from high to low, and dry before wet. Ceiling fans, light fixtures, vent covers and the tops of cabinets come first, because anything knocked loose up there falls. Door frames and trim get wiped next, then counters and sinks. Floors are always last. They get vacuumed and then mopped, so dust from the top of the room goes into the vacuum instead of drying onto a wet floor.

The kitchen and the bathrooms take the most time. Cooking leaves a thin film of grease on cabinet doors near the stove, and dust sticks to it until the wood looks dull. In the bathroom, soap and body oil build a cloudy layer on shower glass and tile. Both need a cleaner that sits on the surface for a few minutes before anyone scrubs. Skip the wait and you just push the film around.

• Ceiling fan blades and vent covers dusted
• Baseboards and door frames wiped by hand
• Shower glass and tile scrubbed of film
• Cabinet fronts degreased near the stove
• Floors vacuumed and mopped to the edges

Spring pollen and summer humidity add dirt

Spring around Nashville brings a heavy coat of yellow pollen. It settles on cars and porches, and it comes inside on shoes and through every window opened on a nice day. Once inside, it collects in window tracks, on sills, on blinds and along the screen frames. A deep cleaning in late spring pulls it out of the tracks and corners before it gets ground into carpet and tile grout.

Summer here is long and humid, so the air conditioning runs for months. Every vent cover and return grille catches a gray fuzz of dust, and a dusty vent blows it back across a freshly cleaned room. The same damp air feeds mildew in bathrooms, mostly where the exhaust fan is weak or never gets switched on. You see it as dark spots in the grout and along the caulk at the bottom of the tub.

Middle Tennessee soil is heavy clay, and it gets tracked in on boots and paws. In the newer neighborhoods of Spring Hill and Nolensville, where a lot of lawns are still young, it gets worse after every rain. Clay leaves a reddish brown stain on grout near the back door and along the bottom of baseboards. The water here also runs through limestone, so faucets and glass shower doors collect chalky white spots that soap will not remove.

Tall ceilings and big homes take longer

Many newer homes around Franklin, Spring Hill and Nolensville have two-story family rooms and foyers. The ceiling fan hangs far above the couch, and there is often a ledge over the front door or a row of windows up high. Dust sits up there for years because nobody can reach it from the floor. Those spots take a ladder or an extension pole, and they get done first, before anything below them is cleaned.

Out around College Grove there are older farmhouses and homes on acreage with wood floors and plenty of painted trim. Painted trim has grooves and corners that hold dust, so it gets wiped by hand instead of a quick swipe with a duster. Wood floors get a damp mop, never a wet one. Water left standing on an older floor seeps into the gaps between the boards, and the edges can swell and lift.

We also clean luxury homes over four thousand square feet, and a house that size needs a plan before the first room. There are more bathrooms and a lot more glass, and the counters are often marble or another natural stone. Vinegar and other acidic cleaners leave dull marks on stone that do not wipe off, so stone gets a cleaner made for it. We ask which rooms the family uses most, so the time goes where people actually live.

Skipped steps leave dirt behind

Most problems on a deep cleaning come from doing things out of order. If the floors get mopped before the fan blades are dusted, the dust lands on a damp floor and dries into a gray film. If the counters are wiped before the tops of the upper cabinets, that dust ends up on clean counters. Working in the right order is slower at the beginning and faster by the end.

Cleaner that is not wiped off makes its own mess. It dries into a sticky layer on counters and floors, and that layer grabs the next round of dust and footprints. On shower glass it leaves streaks that look like soap scum that never came off. So every surface that gets a cleaner also gets a wipe with clean water or a fresh cloth. Cloths get changed often, so dirt from one room is never carried into the next.

Missed spots are usually behind or under something. Think of the floor behind the toilet, the side of the refrigerator, the tops of door frames and the corners of window tracks. When those stay dirty, the house never quite smells clean, even when the counters shine. When you book, tell Lauren which rooms bother you most, and those rooms get the extra time.