We photograph every room before we leave

Every visit ends with the floors

A regular visit works from the top of each room down, and dusting comes before anything wet. Ceiling fans and high surfaces go first, so whatever falls lands on floors that have not been done yet. Then cabinet fronts and door knobs get wiped, along with the inside of the microwave, and the bathrooms get cleaned. Floors come last: rugs vacuumed, then hard floors mopped on the way out, so nobody walks across a wet floor to reach the next room.

You can tell a good regular clean the moment you walk in. Counters are wiped and dry, with no streaks when the light hits them. The kitchen sink is scrubbed, and the bathroom mirror has no spots. Rugs show fresh vacuum lines. Anything you left out has been straightened and put somewhere you can find it. Nothing should need a second look from you.

Skipping a step shows up fast. Mop before the dusting is done and you are pushing dust around in wet streaks. Leave the ceiling fan for later, and the blades drop a gray film over a clean room the first time it runs. Door knobs are the easy one to forget. Nobody looks at them, and after a few missed visits they are dark and tacky where every hand in the house grabs them.

• Ceiling fans dusted before anything else
• Door knobs and cabinet fronts wiped down
• Bathrooms cleaned and trash bins emptied
• Rugs vacuumed and hard floors mopped last
• A photo of each room when we finish

The first visit takes the longest

The first time we clean a house on a regular plan, the visit runs longer than the ones after it. That visit is the initial cleaning. Its job is to take out buildup that has been sitting for a while. Think grease on the cabinet fronts by the stove and soap film on the shower glass. Once that is gone, each regular visit only has to deal with what came back since the last one, which is a much smaller job.

When that first catch-up gets skipped, a regular service tends to disappoint. The house starts behind, so every visit spends its time on old grime. The rooms never reach the point where they actually look clean. It feels like paying for half a clean. Getting the house to a real starting point first is what lets the shorter visits after it hold that level visit after visit.

How often we come back is your call, and it changes how much each visit has to do. A house cleaned every week rarely gets past a light layer of dust and a few spots on the mirror. Stretch the gap and the kitchen and bathrooms carry more each time, so more of the visit goes to scrubbing. A home with dogs or small children usually does better on a shorter gap.

Norfolk humidity brings mildew back fast

Summer in Norfolk means damp air most days, from late spring well into the fall. Bathrooms show it first. A shower that gets used every day and never fully dries grows pink or black spots in the grout. The bottom of the curtain goes next, often within a few weeks. When the shower gets wiped down on every visit, the spots never get a hold. Left for a month, they stain the grout, and getting that out is a much bigger job.

Spring brings a different problem. Pine pollen turns cars and porches yellow across Hampton Roads, and it comes inside on shoes and dog paws. It settles on every flat surface and gets ground into the rugs by the door. Ceiling fans run most of the year here, and the blades collect that dust fast. Dusting them on each visit keeps it from coming back down onto the beds and the floor.

Homes near the bay and the beaches get a steady supply of sand. It comes in on flip-flops and beach towels, then works its way into rugs and along the edges of hard floors. That is why rugs get vacuumed and hard floors get swept before a mop touches them. Sand dragged under a wet mop scratches wood and vinyl, and after enough visits the finish turns dull in the paths people walk most.

Older Norfolk homes need gentler floor care

Many Norfolk houses are older than they look from the street. You see two-story frame houses with original oak floors and plaster walls. You also see plenty of brick ranches and Cape Cods from the middle of the last century. Old hardwood has usually been sanded and refinished more than once, so the finish on top can be thin. It gets a damp mop, never a wet one. Standing water on old oak soaks into the seams between boards and makes the edges curl up.

Basements are rare around Norfolk because ground water sits close to the surface. Most older houses stand on crawl spaces instead, and on a humid summer day that crawl space sends damp air up through the floor. Closets and back bedrooms that stay shut are where you notice it first, as a stale smell. Dusting and vacuuming those rooms on each visit, instead of skipping them because nobody uses them, helps keep them from turning into the musty corner of the house.

Newer apartments and townhouses in the area tend to have vinyl plank floors and flat painted walls. Vinyl handles water better than old oak, but too much cleaner leaves a film that shows every footprint by the next day. A well-wrung mop and a dry pass over the shiny spots keep it from going cloudy. Flat paint marks easily, and scrubbing a smudge takes the paint off with it, so marks around door knobs and frames get a soft wipe.

You get a photo of each room

After each room is finished, we take a photo of it, and you get the whole set. Pamela Abad put it this way in her review: "After cleaning each room they take a photo and send them all to you." On a regular schedule that matters. You may be at work while we clean. The photos let you see the kitchen and the bathrooms from your phone. You don't have to wait until you get home to find out.

Photos also help over the long run. When a regular clean starts to slip, it slips slowly. The ring in the tub comes back a little, or the fan blades get missed once and then twice. Looking at this visit's photos next to an earlier set makes that easy to catch, for you and for us. If something in a picture does not look right, say so, and we will go over that room with you.

If you have to head out before we finish, that is fine. Marcus Douglas had to leave early during his first house cleaning. He wrote that "they locked everything up and let the dog in as well!" Tell us once how the house should be left. For example, tell us whether the dog stays in or out and which doors get locked. On a regular schedule those details carry over from visit to visit. You are not explaining them again each time.