We work in homes across Chesapeake

Chesapeake homes change a lot by neighborhood

Chesapeake covers a lot of ground, and the houses change as you drive across it. South Norfolk is an older part of the city, and many homes there have painted wood trim and deep window sills that hold dust. Greenbrier and Great Bridge are mostly newer subdivisions with open kitchens and bedrooms upstairs. Down around Hickory the lots get bigger, and a lot of houses back onto fields or woods.

Each kind of house gets dirty in its own way. In the older homes, dust settles on trim and along the tops of cabinets, where a quick wipe never reaches. In an open kitchen, grease from the stove drifts onto the cabinet fronts and the microwave, and it spreads farther than people expect. Houses near fields and woods get more dirt walked in on shoes. You'll see it on the hard floors by the door.

So we plan the clean around the house in front of us. In South Norfolk that often means wiping trim and sills by hand. In Greenbrier or Great Bridge the time usually goes to the kitchen and the bathrooms, where most of the grime collects. A customer wrote, "After cleaning each room they take a photo and send them all to you." You can see what got done even if you were at work.

• Ceiling fans dusted before the floors are done
• Cabinet fronts and door knobs wiped by hand
• Oven and microwave cleaned inside on request
• Interior windows and sills wiped of pollen
• Hard floors mopped and rugs vacuumed

Pollen and humidity make extra cleaning work

Chesapeake sits low and flat, with the Intracoastal Waterway running through it and part of the Great Dismal Swamp inside the city limits. Summers are long and humid. In spring the pine trees drop yellow pollen over everything, from cars to porch furniture. Then it rides inside on shoes and pets every time a door opens, and it settles on whatever surface is closest.

Both leave marks you can find without looking hard. Ceiling fan blades collect a gray film, and switching the fan on throws that dust across the room. Window sills and sliding door tracks hold a yellow line of pollen for weeks. In bathrooms, damp air keeps grout and shower corners wet long enough for mildew to start. Leave any of it for a season and it takes real scrubbing to lift.

We work from the top of each room down, so falling dust lands on floors we haven't cleaned yet. Ceiling fans get done ahead of the cabinet tops and window sills. Floors come last. In the bathrooms we scrub the grout lines and shower corners instead of wiping over them. If a house has gone a long stretch without a real clean, we start with a deep clean. After that, regular visits keep it from building back up.

We clean houses between tenants and sales

When a Chesapeake house goes on the market or a tenant moves out, the empty rooms show everything. Furniture used to hide the dust along the baseboards and the scuffs on the walls. Inside the kitchen, the cabinets and drawers still hold crumbs, and the oven still holds whatever the last people there cooked. Buyers and new tenants open all of it when they walk through.

Cleaning between tenants is a specialty for us, and so is getting a house ready to list. A real estate client wrote, "We use Maid it on all of our multifamily and residential cleans." On those jobs we clean inside the kitchen cabinets and the oven. Walls get washed where the scuffs need it. Then we mop the hard floors on the way out the door.

If you're buying in Chesapeake, the house needs a clean before you move in, too. It can look fine at the showing and still hold grime from the people before you. That is especially true if they had small kids or indoor pets. A customer hired us to deep clean a home they had just bought. They wrote, "These guys are real pros." The best time is before the boxes arrive, while every room is empty and every corner is easy to reach.

Getting a price in Chesapeake

Call Maid It at (757) 831-0333, or request an online estimate from this page. Tell us where in Chesapeake the house is and what kind of clean you need. You'll get a written price before you agree to anything. If the job's hard to judge from a description, Alina can come to the house for a consult. We're open every day of the week.