Chicago home cleaning services
Chicago cleaning services for every kind of home
Cleaning services in Chicago cover a dozen different jobs, and the first thing to sort out is which one your place needs. A once-a-month home cleaning for a lived-in apartment and a move-out clean in an empty one are two different pages, with two different prices and two different checklists.
Which cleaning services fit your place
Regular and one-time cleaning
A maid service is the standard visit: kitchen, bathrooms, dusting and floors, run through the home from high to low. Weekly cleaning is the same job on a schedule, every week or every other week, so the place does not drift between visits. A one-time cleaning covers a single visit with no schedule, before a party or after one, or just because the week got away from you. Apartment cleaning is the same work in a condo, a mid-rise or a walk-up, where getting in through the building is as much of the job as the cleaning itself. Green cleaning runs the standard visit with milder products on request, swapped in from your preferences.
Bigger cleans
A deep cleaning reaches what a regular visit skips: baseboards, cabinet fronts, grout, radiators, inside appliances, the tops of fixtures. It is the right first visit after a long gap, before a schedule starts, or when a place is being handed over to a new household. Spring cleaning is a deep clean built around what a Chicago winter leaves behind: salt film at the door, dust that collected during the heating season, and the inside of windows that have been shut. Post-construction cleaning is a different job again, done once the trades leave: drywall dust is not grease and does not come off the way grease does.
Moves and rentals
Move-out cleaning is a cleaning in an empty unit. The rooms are bare and every surface is visible; appliances stay in place and we clean what is visible around them. Cabinets, drawers, closets, sills, bathrooms and floors all open up when nothing is in the way. Move-in cleaning is the same cleaning in the apartment you are about to live in, done before the boxes arrive. Short-term rentals need turnovers between guests that reset the kitchen, the bath and the surfaces a visitor touches, and notice anything left behind.
When you are not sure
Call and tell us about the place. The rooms, the bathrooms, the building and how we get in, the pets, when the place last had a thorough cleaning, and what bothers you most about it right now. From there we can say whether a maid service is the job, or a deep clean first, or a move-out, and point you to the matching page. Many lived-in households land on a maid service with a deep first visit, but which is right depends on the apartment in front of us. The guide on deep cleaning or regular cleaning walks through the choice step by step.
A few tests tend to decide which page fits. If a thorough clean was a few weeks ago, a regular visit will catch it up; if it has been six months or longer, a deep clean comes first. If the apartment is empty, the page is move-out or move-in; if it is lived in, the page is a maid service. If a date is driving the clean, that date tends to name the service: a lease ending, a landlord's walk-through, a renovation finishing, a guest arriving.
What every visit covers
The kitchen and the bathrooms carry most of the work in a standard visit. Dusting runs from high to low, from the floor with an extendable duster, so nothing out of reach has to come down. The kitchen covers counters, the outside of appliances, the sink and the stovetop. The bathrooms cover the tub or shower, the toilet, the vanity and the mirror. Floors go last, vacuumed and mopped, on the way out. Beds get made if you ask. Nothing personal gets sorted or put away. The guide on what a standard visit covers has the full room-by-room list.
A price for the visit is agreed before any cleaning starts, and nothing on it runs on a stopwatch during the day. Products and supplies are sorted up front too: what is in the home, what you would like used, and whether you want something milder for a reason. If anything in the home needs to be left exactly as it is, say so on the call and again at the door, and we leave it alone. Things to point out include a photograph on a wall that stays, a drawer that stays closed, a desk whose papers stay where they are, a plant that does not want water on the day.
Walk-ups and towers across Chicago
Chicago's housing is split across very different buildings. About 57 percent of the city's housing units sit in buildings of one to four units: single-family houses, two-flats, three-flats and small walk-ups. About 20 percent sit in buildings of 50 or more units. A two-flat visit means a back porch, a shared front hall and wood stairs on the way up to a unit; a mid-rise or tower visit involves a front desk, a service elevator, loading-dock rules and sometimes a reservation. The cleaning in an apartment building page covers what changes about getting in and getting the work done, and the guide on older buildings and what they need covers what changes about the cleaning itself. Renters live in a majority of the city's occupied homes, which is one reason apartment cleaning rather than house cleaning tends to be the shape of the question.
Inside a two-flat or inside a tower, the cleaning is the same work; what changes is how we get to the door.
Walk-ups and towers across Chicago
About 57 percent of Chicago's housing units sit in small buildings, and about 20 percent sit in buildings of 50 or more units.
Walk-ups and smaller buildings
About 57 percent of Chicago's housing units sit in buildings of one to four units.
- Houses, two-flats, three- or four-flats and small walk-ups.
- A back porch, a shared front hall and wood stairs up to a unit.
- Entry is on foot from the sidewalk.
Mid-rises and towers
About 20 percent of Chicago's housing units sit in buildings of 50 or more units.
- A front desk, a buzzer and a visitor sheet.
- A service elevator, loading-dock rules and reservation hours.
- Each building has its own habits around access.
What we leave to other trades
We clean homes. 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 belong with other trades. If the shape of the work on your call is one of those, telling us saves a visit. The home itself may still need a cleaning before or after the specialist comes through, and that part is a page we can quote on the same call.
Picking the right page before you call
Follow a service link above for the full description, or phone us at (312) 436-0710 and tell us the shape of the job. The guides on how a cleaning is priced and getting ready for the first visit are both useful reading beforehand, and how a job sets up covers what comes after that first call.