We clean homes all over Marblehead

Older Marblehead houses trap more dust

Marblehead's Old Town is packed with wooden houses from colonial times, set close together on narrow streets that wind down to the harbor. Inside, they tend to have low ceilings and steep stairs, with a lot of trim on the walls. Chair rails, window casings, door frames and built-in shelves all have a flat top edge. Every one of those edges collects dust, and an old house has far more of them than a new one.

The order of the work matters more in a house like this. If the floors get vacuumed first and the trim gets dusted after, the dust lands right back on the clean floor. So we start at the ceiling fans and wall hangings and work down to the door frames and mini blinds. The floors come last. Old wide floorboards often have gaps between them, and grit settles into those gaps. The vacuum has to go along the length of each board to pull it out.

Out on Marblehead Neck and in the newer neighborhoods, the houses get larger and the problem shifts. Big rooms with big windows face the water. When the sun comes in off the ocean, it shows every streak on the glass and every fingerprint on a patio door. In those houses, more of the time goes into glass and open floor, and less into trim. The checklist is the same across town. Where the hours go depends on the house.

• Ceiling fans and wall hangings dusted first
• Door frames and mini blinds wiped down
• Floors vacuumed last, along each board
• Patio doors and door windows cleaned
• Linens changed and beds made

Salt air leaves a film on windows

Marblehead sits out on a rocky point with the ocean on most sides, so salt air reaches almost every street in town. It settles on window glass as a thin, cloudy film that keeps building until someone washes it off. Older houses often have windows split into many small panes, and salt gathers in the corners of each one. Wiping that film with a dry cloth mostly smears it around. The glass needs a real wash, and the windows facing the harbor need it most. Interior and exterior window cleaning are both on our list of services.

Floors here get dirty in different ways in summer and winter. In summer, sand from Devereux Beach comes home on shoes and towels and ends up in rugs and along the baseboards. In winter, road salt and slush come through the front door on boots. Salt dries into white streaks on wood floors, and grit ground into a carpet wears it out faster. A recurring visit keeps that grit from grinding in.

The ocean also keeps the air damp for much of the year, and fog often comes in off the water. Damp air makes dust cling to surfaces, and rooms that stay shut can start to smell stale. Some houses on the Neck sit closed up for part of the year. A deep clean before you move back in clears the dust that settled while the house was empty. You come back to made beds and clean floors instead of a weekend of chores.

Marblehead renovations and moves need deep cleans

Old houses get updated, and in Marblehead that can mean a new kitchen or old floors sanded and refinished. The contractor hauls away the big debris, but the fine dust stays behind. It settles on top of door frames and between the slats of the blinds, and it coats every floor in the house. After a renovation, one customer wrote: "Called for a one-time clean after renovations and they handled all the dust and leftover mess without complaining."

Houses in Marblehead change hands, and an empty house shows dirt that a furnished one hides. With the furniture gone, you can see the dust lines where a bookcase stood and the grease left inside the oven. Move-in and move-out cleaning takes the whole house from the top down, including the inside of the oven and the microwave. If the last owner left junk behind, we can take that trash out as well.

Once the house is clean, recurring visits keep it that way. If you work from home, the house gets used all day. It gets dirty faster than one that sits empty until evening. One customer said this: "I work from home and having them come every other week keeps the place manageable." The cleaning plan is set up for your house. You choose how often we come and which rooms get the most time.

Getting a price in Marblehead

Call us at (617) 803-6705, or ask for an estimate online. Tell us how big the house is and what kind of cleaning you want, such as a recurring visit or a one-time deep clean. Mention anything special, like windows facing the harbor or an Old Town house with a lot of trim. You get a free quote, so you know the price before you decide.