We clean homes all over Malden

Malden's older homes have more to dust

A lot of Malden's houses went up around the turn of the last century, when the city grew into a commuter town for Boston. Walk through Edgeworth or Maplewood and you pass one wood-frame two-family house after another, with plenty of triple-deckers mixed in. They were built with long wooden staircases and painted trim around every door and window. Many still have cast iron radiators under the sills. It all looks good, and it gives dust far more places to settle than a newer house does.

Dust in an older house does not stay on the floor. Warm air rising off a radiator carries it up, and it settles on sills and on top of every door frame, where nobody looks. Stair spindles and railings collect it one floor at a time. Leave those spots for a few months and the house starts to smell stale even when the floors look clean. Grime on painted trim also gets harder to wipe off the longer it sits.

So in an older Malden house we work from the top down. Ceiling fans and wall hangings get dusted first. Door frames and railings come next, and the floors are vacuumed last so nothing falls on a surface we already cleaned. Carpeted stairs get vacuumed on every step, since stairs catch a lot of grit in a house with a long stairway. In a two-family house, tell us whether you want one unit or both, and we plan the visit around the floors you name.

• Ceiling fans and wall hangings dusted
• Door frames wiped on every floor
• Mini blinds dusted in every room
• Carpets and stairs vacuumed
• Inside of the oven and microwave cleaned

Malden winters bring salt through the door

Malden is a city where a lot of people walk. Plenty of them come home on foot from the Orange Line at Malden Center or Oak Grove. In winter every one of those walks crosses sidewalks treated with salt and sand, and boots carry it inside. After a few weeks you can see a white film on the hardwood near the door. The sand gets ground into the carpet at the bottom of the stairs. Salt left on a wood floor all winter dulls the finish.

Then there is the heating season. From late fall into spring the windows stay shut and the heat runs most of the day, so dust has nowhere to go. It builds up on mini blinds and ceiling fan blades. A fan that nobody dusted all winter throws a gray cloud across the room the first warm day it gets turned on. Basement laundry rooms, common in Malden's two-family houses, collect lint and damp over the same months. We dust the fan blades before that happens, and we clean the laundry room while we are there.

Malden runs up against the Middlesex Fells on its northern side, and in late spring the pollen from all those trees settles on everything. It coats window sills and slides down into the tracks of windows and patio doors. Summer brings humid days when the windows stay open, and the pollen keeps drifting in. Rain on a coated window dries into yellow streaks. We clean windows inside and out, and we wipe down the patio door and its track.

Empty Malden units need a different clean

A lot of Malden households rent. Leases around greater Boston tend to end and restart together at the start of September. That leaves landlords and departing tenants needing the same apartment cleaned in the same few days. An empty unit shows everything a furnished one hides. You see the grease inside the oven and the ring of dust on the floor where a couch sat. A move-in or move-out clean goes after those spots. It also covers the inside of the microwave and the laundry room.

Plenty of older Malden houses are getting renovated, from a new kitchen in one unit to a whole two-family turned into condos. Construction dust is much finer than everyday dust. It hangs in the air, then settles on the tops of door frames and inside mini blinds, and a quick sweep only moves it around. A post construction clean up starts once the contractors are gone and works through every room. One Google reviewer wrote: "Called for a one-time clean after renovations and they handled all the dust and leftover mess without complaining. Communication was easy and the price was fair."

Some empty houses need more than a regular clean. A home coming out of foreclosure can sit for months, with trash left behind and thick dust on everything. We handle foreclosure cleaning and trash out, so whatever was left gets cleared first and then the rooms get cleaned. That matters to a Malden owner or agent getting a house ready to show. Buyers look hard at an empty house, and dirty floors or a greasy oven make it look neglected. We also clean offices and workplaces for Malden businesses.

Getting a price in Malden

Call (617) 803-6705 or ask for an online estimate on this site. Tell us your street and whether the home is a single-family house or one unit of a two-family. Then tell us whether you want recurring visits or a one-time deep clean. The price depends on the size of the home and the type of clean, so we put it in a free quote. You see what the visit covers and what it costs before you agree to anything.