We clean homes across Saugus

Saugus has a lot of capes and ranches

Drive through Cliftondale or North Saugus and you pass one cape after another, with ranches and split-levels mixed in. A lot of them went up after the Second World War, when Saugus grew fast. They are solid houses. They were also built for smaller families and less stuff, so the rooms are tight and closet space runs short. When every closet is full, things land on counters and floors, and a good clean has to work around them.

Upstairs in a cape, the bedrooms sit under sloped ceilings, and the low corners along the side walls are where dust piles up. Those rooms often get the least traffic, so the dust can sit for weeks before anyone sees it. We dust the ceiling fans and wall hangings up there and vacuum into those low corners. Door frames upstairs get wiped too, since in a tight hallway every hand going by touches them.

Ranches keep everything on one floor, which makes them quick to clean well. The work tends to pile up downstairs. A lot of ranches and split-levels in town have a finished basement with the washer and dryer in it, and that room collects lint on every flat surface. We clean the laundry room and fold what is waiting in the basket. Plenty of these houses still have mini blinds, and we dust each slat instead of giving them a quick swipe.

• Ceiling fans dusted in upstairs bedrooms
• Low corners under sloped ceilings vacuumed
• Door frames wiped in tight hallways
• Basement laundry room cleaned and laundry folded
• Every slat of the mini blinds dusted

Saugus winters bring salt onto your floors

From the first snow until spring, Saugus streets get salted and sanded, and most driveways do too. That salt comes inside on boots and dog paws. In a lot of capes and ranches the side door opens straight into the kitchen, so that is where it lands. It dries into a white film on the floor and gets ground into the carpet by the door. Grit left there scratches floors and wears carpet faster than walking ever would.

So winter visits put more time into the entry and the kitchen. We vacuum the carpets and floors near every door, and we go over them again at the end, after the rest of the house is done. Door windows and the glass on patio doors pick up salty splash from wet boots and dogs. It dries into a hazy streak near the bottom of the glass. It looks like a smudge, but it is salt, and a dry cloth only spreads it around.

Spring brings a different mess. The north side of Saugus runs up against the oak and pine woods of Breakheart Reservation. Pollen from those trees settles as a yellow coat on window sills and glass. Down in East Saugus, along the river and the salt marsh, the air stays damp and glass picks up a haze. A seasonal clean with inside and outside windows takes both off before summer, and you can see out again.

Some Saugus homes need one big clean

When an older Saugus cape gets opened up, with a dormer added upstairs or a wall taken out downstairs, the dust goes everywhere. It drifts into closets and onto kitchen counters. It settles on door frames and wall hangings and coats every ceiling fan blade, even in rooms the contractor never touched. A regular visit is not built for that much fine dust, and it keeps coming back until someone clears all of it.

That is what our post-construction cleanup is for. We start high and work down, so the ceiling fans and door frames are done before the floors. If the kitchen was part of the job, we clean the appliances and the inside of the oven and microwave, where drywall dust gets in. One customer, Patricia Weibel, wrote this on Google: "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."

The other big clean is a move. When a Saugus house changes hands, the move-out clean lands at the end of a long week, and nobody has energy left for it. We clean the appliances and vacuum every room once the furniture is out, so the next owner walks into a clean house. A move-in clean works the same way before your boxes arrive. For houses that sat empty or came back from the bank, we also do foreclosure cleaning and trash-outs.

Getting a price in Saugus

Call North Shore Maids at (617) 803-6705, or ask for an online estimate. Tell us what kind of house it is and whether you want recurring visits or one big clean. If it is a move-out or a cleanup after renovation work, say so, because that changes the job. You get the estimate in writing before anything is booked. We are open 24 hours Monday to Friday, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Saturday and from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM on Sunday.