A price starts with rooms and bathrooms
Every quote begins with a rough count of what has to be cleaned. Rooms set the scope and the dusting load. Bathrooms set the scrubbing load. A one-bed with a single full bath is a different job from a three-bed with two baths and a half, and a cleaner who skips over the count up front will miss by a wide margin once the quote lands.
Two-bedroom homes are the most common size in Chicago, at 422,866 units, and about 39 percent of all units run three bedrooms or more. The count sets the baseline for the quote.
Bathrooms weigh more than bedrooms
A bathroom takes more work to clean well than a bedroom of the same size. Grout, tile, a shower door, a toilet, a mirror, a vanity and a floor all need water and a cloth. A bedroom is mostly surfaces and a floor.
Two homes with the same square footage can quote at different numbers if one has a single bath and the other has three. A half-bath with just a sink and a toilet has less to clean than a full room with a tub, so full and half get counted separately.
The first visit usually covers the most ground
A first visit always has more to get through than the ones that follow. The buildup from the last time somebody got to the top of a cabinet, behind a toilet or along a baseboard was not put there yesterday. We find it on the first pass, and the pass takes longer.
That is why many homes go through a deep cleaning before switching to a schedule. The deep clean carries the backlog. Later visits have less buildup to deal with, because the surface the next cleaner inherits has already been reset.
If your home has had regular visits in the past and the surfaces are in good shape, you may not need the deep version to start. From a few details about when the home was last cleaned top to bottom and where you see the heaviest spots, we can usually tell which fits. The guide on deep or regular walks through the choice.
How often we come changes each visit
A home cleaned every week has less to get through per visit than the same home cleaned every month. The pace of life inside does not change much; the frequency of cleaning does, and the work per visit moves with it.
A recurring schedule carries less between visits for that reason, and the amount of work per stop drops with it. The same surfaces get touched; each surface just has less on it. A monthly visit has more buildup waiting on it than a weekly visit, because another month's worth of film has settled on everything by the time we arrive. Our page on how often to schedule walks through pacing for different kinds of households.
Pets, kids and cooking show up on floors and counters
Three household facts tend to shift what a floor and a counter look like after a week. A dog on a staircase moves dander and hair into every corner of the stair; a toddler with a sippy cup leaves a path; a kitchen used every night leaves a film on the stove, the backsplash and the counter that gets heavier than one used twice a week for coffee and takeout.
The point is what the cleaner is going to see when the door opens. A home with two cats and a daily cook has more to clean than a one-person apartment where the stove is almost never on, even if the two apartments measure the same on paper. Say so on the call, and the quote lands closer to the real number.
Pet hair is the most common one of these to catch households by surprise. A dog that sheds moves a layer onto couches, rugs and bedding that does not show up until the vacuum has been through it, and a kitchen used every evening builds a greasy film on surfaces that a once-a-month wipe does not catch. None of this changes whether a home is a good one to clean. It changes how long the visit takes and where the hours land.
Walk-ups and towers across Chicago both add steps
Access matters more than people expect. About 57 percent of Chicago's housing units sit in buildings of one to four units: single-family houses, two-flats, three-flats and small courtyards where every floor is reached on foot. On the other end, about 20 percent of the city's units sit in buildings of 50 or more, where a front desk, a service elevator and a loading dock stand between the sidewalk and the apartment door.
A third-floor walk-up with a tight stairwell takes more work to move into than a ground-floor unit with its own street door. A high-rise with a service elevator falls somewhere in the middle. The cleaning itself is the same once everyone is inside; the setup and the pack-out are what change. Mention which kind of building you live in and we build it into the plan. The apartment cleaning page has more on buildings with doormen and buzzers.
Deep, move-out and post-construction cleans are priced as their own jobs
A standard visit, a deep clean, a move-out cleaning and a post-construction cleanup are different jobs with different prices.
| What changes the price | Why | What to say on the call |
|---|---|---|
| Rooms and bathrooms | Bathrooms carry the scrubbing load | Full baths and half-baths, counted separately |
| The last thorough clean | A first visit carries the backlog | How many months since the last top-to-bottom |
| Pets and daily cooking | Floors and counters hold more between visits | Species and numbers, how often the stove is used |
| Building access | Stairs and front desks shift the setup | Floor, elevator, buzzer, front desk, loading dock |
| The kind of job | A deep clean is not a move-out | Which one you think it is, in your own words |
| The schedule | Weekly leaves less to do each time | Weekly, every other week, monthly, one visit |
A move-out cleaning takes place in an empty unit, so a cleaner can get inside closets, under appliances and along baseboards with nothing in the way. That changes what the visit has to cover. A post-construction clean deals with drywall dust, which bonds to surfaces and needs a different approach than ordinary soil. Neither is priced like a maid visit, and asking for a maid-visit quote on either one leaves the quote short.
If the home has been through a renovation and you want it cleaned before the furniture moves back, that is a post-construction job. If you want somebody in a lived-in home, that is a maid visit or a deep clean, depending on where the home stands.
Rooms, bathrooms and kids matter, and so do stairs, elevators and the front desk.
What moves the price of a cleaning
The drivers that come up on every call, with no dollar figures and no hourly rate.
Inside the home
- Rooms and bathrooms, with full and half baths counted apart.
- How long since the last top-to-bottom clean.
- Pets, kids and how often the stove runs.
Getting into the home
- A walk-up versus an elevator building.
- A front desk, a buzzer or a lockbox.
- Service elevators, loading-dock rules and reservations.
Hourly rates and per-visit prices measure different things
People often ask what cleaners charge an hour. An hourly rate on its own is only part of the picture: a crew that gets through the home with time to spare and a crew that runs out of hours on the same rate land at different numbers on the invoice, and the household cares about the number at the bottom of it.
A per-visit price names a figure tied to the home itself, not to a clock. One-off jobs with uncertain scope are sometimes a better fit for an hourly arrangement; a recurring visit in a known home is a different pricing conversation.
What to ask before you agree to a price
A good quote tells you what is in it and what is not. Before you say yes, run through five questions with the cleaner.
- Which rooms and bathrooms the price counts.
- Which items sit inside the visit and which are extras: inside the oven, inside the fridge, interior windows, baseboards.
- Who brings the supplies, and whether you can ask us to use something you prefer or skip something you do not want in the home.
- What happens if the first visit uncovers much more work than the quote assumed.
- Who to call if something was missed when you walked back in.
A cleaner who answers all five without hedging is giving you something concrete to work from. There is more in what to ask any cleaner when you are weighing a quote against another one.