We reset your rental between guests

Every rental clean follows the same order

Every rental clean starts with a walk through the whole house before anything gets wiped. We look at what the last guests left behind, from dishes in the sink to wet towels on the bathroom floor. Beds get stripped next, so the used linens are out of the way. The kitchen comes after that, then the bathrooms and the dusting. Floors go last, and we work back toward the door so nobody walks across a floor that is already done.

After a good clean, the house looks like the photos on your listing. Beds are made tight with clean sheets and the towels sit where a guest will look for them. The fridge is empty. There is no hair in the shower drain and no ring of coffee on the counter. A guest should walk in and find no sign that anyone stayed there the night before. People notice what the last guest left before they notice anything else.

The steps that get skipped are the ones a rushed cleaner cannot see from the doorway. Nobody checks under the beds, and the next guest finds a sock or an empty bottle. The dishwasher gets shut with the last guest's dirty dishes still in it. The fridge gets a glance instead of a wipe, and a week later something in the back starts to smell. So on every visit we look under each bed and open the dishwasher before we call the kitchen done.

• Beds stripped and made with clean sheets
• Fridge cleared of leftovers and wiped down
• Bathrooms scrubbed and fresh towels set out
• Trash pulled from every room
• Floors vacuumed and mopped last

Tennessee weather comes in with every guest

Spring around College Grove brings a heavy load of tree pollen. It lands as a yellow film on porch rails and window sills, and every guest tracks more of it in on their shoes. In a rental that sits empty for a few days, it builds up on dark counters and hard floors, where it shows first. So in spring the dusting takes longer, and we give the entry floors extra attention.

Summer is about humidity. A rental closed up between bookings holds damp air. Many houses around here sit on crawl spaces, which push more moisture up into the floors. Wet towels left in a pile by the last guest can start to smell sour in one hot afternoon. Shower grout and the caulk around the tub start to show mildew if they stay wet from one booking to the next. A guest opening the door to a musty smell has made up their mind about the place before they set a bag down.

So wet towels come off the floor first, and we dry the shower walls and glass before we leave. Fall and winter bring a different problem: clay mud. A rainy week turns gravel drives and back yards into mud, and it ends up on the entry rug and the floor inside the back door. Dried clay stains light carpet and grout, so those spots get cleaned before the rest of the floor.

Farmhouses and new builds need different care

College Grove is still mostly farm country, and some rentals out here are older farmhouses or cottages on farm land. Those houses often have wood floors with gaps between the boards that hold grit, so we vacuum before we mop and keep the mop water light. Old window sills and door frames collect dust in the corners. In the fall, lady beetles and stink bugs get inside and gather on sunny windows, so every sill gets checked before we leave.

The newer subdivisions toward Nolensville and Spring Hill are a different job. Most houses there are brick or fiber cement, with one big open room for the kitchen and living area. Fingerprints on a stainless fridge and water spots on a dark counter show from across that room. Many of these houses have vinyl plank floors, which streak if the mop water is too soapy. We use very little soap on them and look at the floor with light coming across it from the windows before we leave.

Big rental homes take the most planning. We clean luxury homes over four thousand square feet, and a rental that size can sleep several families at once. More bedrooms means more beds to strip, and more bathrooms means more showers to dry. When you book, tell Lauren how many beds and baths the house has and how many guests just stayed. That lets us plan the real time the clean takes, instead of finding out halfway through with guests on the way.

We plan each clean around your bookings

Rental cleaning runs on your booking calendar. The window between checkout and the next check-in can be short, and back-to-back bookings leave no room to come back later for something missed. So we ask for your checkout and check-in times up front, along with the door code or where the key is kept. With that in hand, Lauren can schedule each cleaning around your bookings instead of guessing at them.

It also helps to know where things are kept. Tell us where the spare sheets and towels are and where you keep cleaning supplies. If you like the pillows set a certain way or a welcome note left on the counter, send a photo of how it should look. A photo is quicker to follow than a paragraph, and the guest walks into the house you had in mind when you wrote the listing.

Music City House Cleaning is the Gomez family, based in College Grove, and we are licensed and insured. That matters when you hand your door code to people who work in your house while you are away. Cleaning between guests also takes people who keep moving without skipping the small things. Amy DeFrietas, one of our customers, wrote: "They manage their time well, clean diligently to our specifications and are then out the door to their next client."