We clean homes all over Ipswich

Old Ipswich houses need careful cleaning

Ipswich is known for its First Period houses, the timber-frame homes built by the town's earliest families. A good number still stand along High Street and in the East End. Around them you will find Federal houses and Victorians near the center, with capes and newer colonials farther out toward Linebrook Road. Most of the old ones are lived in every day, so the wide pine floors and low beamed ceilings get real use.

Old pine boards shrink over the years and leave gaps, and fine grit settles down into those seams. Wash a floor like that with a soaking wet mop and the water runs straight into the cracks. So wood floors get vacuumed first, gaps included, and then wiped with a cloth that is damp rather than wet. Beams and the tops of door frames are the other problem. They catch dust and cobwebs that nobody notices from the floor until guests come over.

An old house tends to have a project going, often a kitchen or a bathroom. Plaster dust from that work is very fine, so it gets everywhere and keeps settling on beams and sills after the contractor packs up. Post construction clean up is one of the services we offer. Patricia Weibel wrote in her review: "Called for a one-time clean after renovations and they handled all the dust and leftover mess without complaining."

• Gaps between floorboards vacuumed first
• Old wood wiped with a damp cloth, never soaked
• Beams and door frames dusted
• Windows cleaned inside and out
• Plaster dust cleared after renovations

Coastal Ipswich homes collect salt and sand

Ipswich has a long shoreline on its east side. Great Neck and Little Neck reach out where the Ipswich River meets the bay. Argilla Road runs past farms and marsh on its way to Crane Beach. Houses out there take a steady wind off the water, and that wind carries salt. You can see it on the glass as a hazy film. We clean windows inside and out, and a house facing the bay needs it more often than one in town.

Then there is the sand. Anyone who spends an afternoon at Crane Beach brings some home in their shoes and in the beach bag. It settles into entry rugs and down into the track of a sliding patio door. Left on a wood floor, sand scratches the finish a little more with every footstep. So in summer we spend more time at the entry and the patio door, and floors get vacuumed before anything wet touches them.

Some houses on Great Neck and Little Neck sit closed for part of the year. When a cottage opens back up in spring, there are usually dead flies on the sills and a layer of dust on everything flat. A deep clean takes care of that before your first summer weekend. In the fall we can clean again before you lock up for winter, so the appliances are clean inside and the trash is gone.

Ipswich winters bring road salt indoors

Winter here means nor'easters and plenty of salt on the roads. Every trip in from the car brings some of it inside on boots. It dries into white rings on the mudroom floor and gets ground into the hall rug. On a wood floor it leaves a cloudy film that a dry mop only pushes around, so it takes a damp wipe to lift it. Mud season follows in March and April, when the thaw turns dirt driveways and farm roads soft.

Out along Linebrook Road and near Willowdale State Forest, the lots get bigger and more wooded, and many houses are newer colonials and capes. Those homes get heavy traffic through the mudroom from late fall into spring. A recurring visit keeps the mess from building up. The floors get vacuumed and washed each time, and the kitchen and bathrooms get cleaned top to bottom.

In a lot of Ipswich homes, someone works from the kitchen table or rides the commuter train into Boston. Either way, the house gets hard use during the week. A customer named Nicholis wrote this on Google. "I work from home and having them come every other week keeps the place manageable." Recurring visits are part of what we do. The schedule is yours to set.

Getting a price in Ipswich

Call us at (617) 803-6705 or ask for an estimate online. Tell us how many rooms the house has and whether any of the floors are old wood. Then tell us what you need, a single deep clean or a recurring visit. If a renovation just wrapped up or you are moving out, mention that too. The estimate comes back in writing, so you know what the visit covers before you agree to anything.