We clean to your instructions every visit

We clean each room top to bottom

A regular clean starts high and finishes on the floor. Dust comes off shelves, picture frames, lamp shades and ceiling fan blades first, then off tables and windowsills. All of it drifts down, so the floors get vacuumed and mopped last. Do it the other way around and you mop a floor that collects dust for the rest of the visit. Kitchens and bathrooms get their own pass in the middle. Those rooms take water, and they need a few minutes to dry before anyone walks through.

In the kitchen, the counters get cleared and wiped, and the sink gets scrubbed instead of rinsed. A rinsed sink looks fine for a day, then a gray film comes back around the drain. Cabinet pulls and appliance handles get wiped too, because hands touch them all week. In the bathrooms we scrub the tub or shower and the toilet, clean the sink and mirror, then dry the fixtures. Water left on chrome dries into spots, and spots make a clean bathroom look like nobody touched it.

Skipped steps show up slowly. Nobody notices one missed baseboard. But a month of visits that only reach the middle of each room leaves the edges gray and the bathroom corners dark. So a regular clean works from a set list. Before the first visit, we come out for a free estimate and hear what matters most to you in the house. After that we ask for special instructions each visit, whether it is a room that needs extra time or one to leave closed.

• Dusting from high shelves down to baseboards
• Kitchen counters and sink cleaned and dried
• Every bathroom scrubbed, fixtures to floor
• Floors vacuumed first, then mopped
• We ask for special instructions each visit

The seasons change what we clean

Spring on the East End leaves a yellow film on everything. Pine and oak pollen from the woods around Flanders and Manorville comes in through screens and open doors. It settles on windowsills and shows up on every dark tabletop. A dry duster just moves it around, so through the spring we use a damp cloth on sills and ledges. We also wipe out the window tracks, where pollen and dead bugs pack into a paste that gets harder to lift every week it sits.

Summer brings sand. It comes home on feet and in beach bags from Shinnecock Bay and the ocean beaches. On a wood floor, it acts like sandpaper under every step. Weekly vacuuming and mopping keeps it from wearing through the finish in the paths people walk most. Summer also brings damp air. In a bathroom without a strong fan, that means mildew in the grout and along the caulk around the tub. Caught every week, it wipes off. Left for a month, it stains, and stained caulk usually has to be cut out and redone.

Winter is quieter, but it is not clean. Road salt comes in on boots and dries into a white crust inside the door, which dulls a wood floor and can stain stone. Many older houses here heat with baseboard hot water or forced air, and both move dust around. It packs into the fins behind baseboard covers and blows out of floor registers. Summer houses often sit empty in the colder months. A client in Quogue wrote that Suave "goes the extra mile during off season checking all is good at the house."

Older houses here need gentler cleaning

Around Hampton Bays and East Quogue, a lot of houses are cedar shingle Capes and cottages that started out as summer places. Many still have their original pine or oak floors, sanded over the decades until the wood is thin and the seams are open. A wet mop pushes water into those seams, and the boards swell and cup. We mop with a cloth wrung out until it is barely damp, and any spot that stays wet gets dried by hand.

Painted beadboard on walls and porch ceilings holds dust in every groove, and a fast swipe across it leaves a gray line in each one. The cloth has to run along the grooves instead. Older double hung windows have wood strips between the panes, and every one of them is a small ledge that catches dust and pollen. None of this is hard work, but it is slow work. It is also the first thing to get rushed when a cleaning runs short on time, and after a few rushed visits you can see it.

The newer, bigger houses in the area bring different surfaces, like marble counters and large glass shower doors. Stone is the one to be careful with. Vinegar and a lot of all purpose sprays are acidic, and on marble they etch a dull spot that no amount of wiping brings back. Stone gets a cleaner made for stone. Glass shower doors get wiped and then squeegeed, so they dry clear instead of drying into a haze of water marks.

Weekly cleaning stops dirt from building up

The point of a regular clean is that dirt never gets time to set. Soap scum wiped off every week comes away with a cloth. Left for a couple of months, it bonds to the glass and needs scrubbing and a stronger cleaner. Grease on the range hood works the same way, and so does the ring in the toilet bowl. A weekly schedule keeps all of it at the easy stage, so each visit goes to keeping the house clean instead of catching up.

A regular clean is different from a deep clean, and it helps to know where the line sits. Inside the oven and behind heavy furniture are deep clean jobs, done on their own visit. A house on a weekly schedule needs those less often, because the rest of it never falls far behind. Want one of those jobs worked into the regular visits, like wiping out the fridge now and then? Tell us and we will plan it in.

Houses out here change with the calendar. A house that is full in August may sit empty by November. Guests can also show up with a day's notice. Tell us when the house fills up or empties out, and the visits move with it. A summer home owner in Southampton wrote this about us. "They are responsive and adaptable, even when we have needed them on short notice." The same goes for a room you want skipped this week or a spot that needs more attention.