What a Chicago house cleaning company does
A full home cleaning service covers the regular visits (a maid service, weekly or every other week) and the bigger ones (a deep clean for the buildup a regular visit skips, a spring clean built around what a winter leaves behind, and a post-construction clean after a remodel). It also covers one-time cleanings before guests arrive or after a party ends, apartment cleans in buildings with front desks and service elevators, and green cleans with milder products on request. Moves and rentals are their own group: move-out cleans in empty units, move-in cleans before the boxes arrive, and turnovers between short-term guests. The full list and when each one fits is on the everything we clean page.
What belongs to other trades: carpet shampooing, upholstery extraction, outside windows above the ground floor, duct cleaning, mold removal beyond small surface spots on tile and grout, hazardous materials, biohazard, hoarding and crime-scene cleanup, and all office and commercial work. Those are different jobs that need different gear and different training.
How a job sets up
The place-level details come first: the number of rooms and bathrooms, pets and what kind, who lives there and whether anyone will be home on the day, and how we get into the building and the apartment (a buzzer and a code, a doorman with a visitor sheet, a key left somewhere, a service elevator reservation). For a tower, the building's own rules about service visits often shape the plan more than anything inside the unit does; for a walk-up, it is usually the opposite.
Then the cleaning itself: what has been going on with it, whether the kitchen or the bathrooms have fallen behind, when the place last had a thorough clean, and whether this is a visit on its own or the start of a schedule. If anything in the home needs to be left alone, such as a framed photograph, a stack of papers on a desk or a plant that does not take water on the day, this is the moment to say so. The visit respects what you say here.
Products are part of that set of details too, from what is in the home now to anything milder you want swapped in. Surprises on the day are better said in advance than discovered at the door.
The price for the visit is agreed before any cleaning starts. If you would rather leave your number than call right now, the callback form below the phone number takes a name, a number and a short note, and we come back to you.
At your door
The visit starts with a look at the rooms against the details you left. If something has changed since then, now is when we hear about it. Then we go over the plan for the visit room by room: what we are cleaning, in what order, and anything we are leaving alone.
The price is confirmed before any cleaning starts and does not change on the clock during the visit. Once you have agreed, we work from the top of each room down, dusting from the floor with an extendable duster so nothing out of reach has to come down. The kitchen and the bathrooms are the biggest pieces of the job. The floors go last, on the way out of the apartment.
A deep clean reaches more than a standard visit does, since there is time for baseboards, cabinet fronts, grout, radiators, inside appliances and the tops of light fixtures. A move-out reaches more again, since the apartment is empty and every shelf is open. A rental turnover is a tight job on a kitchen, a bath and the surfaces a guest left behind. If you are home, we walk through the apartment with you before we leave and go over anything either side wants to point out.
Chicago homes
Renters live in a majority of the city's occupied homes, and Chicago's homes range from small walk-ups to buildings with front desks and service elevators. A cleaning in a two-flat is a different conversation from a cleaning in a mid-rise. In a two-flat the cleaner comes up a shared front hall, works through a top-floor unit and leaves the way they came in. In a tower there is a front desk, a service elevator, and loading-dock rules the building sets.
Older buildings often have original hex and subway tile, cast-iron radiators, plaster walls and painted trim, and these pieces take a different hand than drywall and vinyl flooring do. Plaster takes a gentle wipe rather than a scrub. Original tile grout holds more grime than modern grout and needs more time at it. Cast-iron radiators collect dust between every column, and the columns have to be reached one at a time. The cleaning in an apartment building page covers getting the work done inside a building, and the guide on older buildings covers the housing stock itself.
The cleaning standard is the same across the city. What differs is the shape of the building and the age of the apartment, so a top-floor condo in a tower and a parlor-floor unit of a greystone three-flat both get the kitchen worked through, the bathroom reset, dusting from high to low, and floors on the way out. A newer unit has less work in the dusting steps and in the grout; an older unit has more at the radiators and the trim. The visit still covers the same list.
How to check us, or anyone
Any cleaning company you talk to in Chicago operates under the City's licensing rules. The City's licensing office says a Chicago business license is required to conduct, engage in, maintain, operate or manage any business in the city; the City adds that business activities regulated by the State of Illinois may be exempt from City licensing. The hiring a house cleaner guide walks through what to ask any company before you book and how to look a license up on the City's business license search.