What actually happens on your first clean

Hiring a cleaner for the first time is oddly uncomfortable. You are letting a stranger into your home, you are not sure what they will judge, and you have no idea whether you are supposed to prepare.

So here is the whole thing, start to finish, including the parts most companies leave vague.

Before: what to do, and what not to bother with

The single most useful thing is clearing surfaces. A counter with twelve things on it takes about three times as long as an empty one, because everything gets lifted, wiped under and put back. Clearing counters and side tables buys real cleaning time.

What you do not need to do is clean. People do it anyway and we understand why, but it is money spent on your own Saturday to make our job easier rather than to make your home cleaner.

• Clear counters, side tables and the bathroom vanity if you can.
• Say what is off limits. A home office mid-project, a guest room, a shelf you would rather nobody touched. We clean around it without asking twice.
• Flag anything fragile or unusual: unsealed stone, waxed wood, a vintage finish, an antique.
• Mention pets, including where they will be and whether they bolt for open doors.
• Sort access once, especially in a condo. That is covered properly in the condo building rules guide.

Why the first visit is often a deep clean

This surprises people and it sounds like an upsell, so it is worth being direct. If a home has not had a thorough clean in the last few months, the first visit is a deep clean and priced as one. After that, recurring visits are standard cleans at the standard rate.

It is arithmetic rather than salesmanship. Baseboards, hard water film on shower glass, the tops of door frames, the inside of the microwave and the grease film behind the hob take hours the first time and minutes thereafter. A standard clean does not include those surfaces at all, so more care on the day would not reach them.

If your home has been maintained, say so, and a standard clean is the right call. We would rather tell you that than take money for work that is not needed. The deep clean or standard clean guide walks through which one applies.

On the day

We arrive with everything: products, cloths, mops and a vacuum. There is nothing for you to buy or store, and if you would rather we used something specific of your own, leave it out with a note and we will use that instead.

The work runs top to bottom and finishes on the floors, because doing it the other way round means cleaning them twice. Bathrooms get started early so descaler has time to work while we are elsewhere. Colour-coded cloths keep bathroom cloths out of the kitchen.

You do not need to be home. Most of our recurring customers are not. For a first visit some people prefer to be there for the opening twenty minutes to point things out and then leave, which is often the best arrangement.

Do you leave the house, or stay?

The most searched question about having a cleaner, and one almost nobody in the industry answers plainly. Both are fine. Here is the honest trade-off.

Staying is better for a first visit. You can answer the two or three questions that always come up, point out the thing that matters to you, and see how the person works. If you work from home, stay. Nobody minds.

Leaving is faster. Cleaners move around a home in a route, and an occupied room breaks the route. In a one bedroom condo that costs a few minutes. In a house, it can be half an hour of working around people.

What most regular customers settle into: stay for the first clean, leave a key or a code after that. If you would rather not be there at all from the start, that is completely normal and you can say so when you book.

• You do not need to entertain us, offer a drink, or apologise for the state of anything.
• If you are home, working in another room is ideal for both sides.
• Nap times, calls and a baby asleep are all workable, just tell us the room and when.

Should you clean before the cleaner comes?

No, and the fact that so many people do is a sign the industry has not explained itself well.

There is a difference between tidying and cleaning, and it is worth being precise. Tidying helps. Clothes off the floor, dishes out of the sink, toys in a box. Every surface we can reach is a surface we can clean, and a home where the floor is clear gets a noticeably better clean in the same time.

Cleaning does not help. Do not wipe the counters, scrub the bath or mop the floor before we arrive. You are paying for exactly that, and doing it twice does not make it cleaner.

If your home is genuinely in a state, say so when you book rather than racing to fix it. It changes which clean you need, not whether we will come.

What we will not do, and will tell you about

Every cleaning company has limits and most of them are vague about it until the day. Ours:

• No exterior windows above ground level, and nothing needing a ladder beyond a two-step.
• No mould remediation. We remove surface mildew on tile, grout and silicone. Mould behind drywall or under flooring is a moisture problem and needs a remediation contractor.
• No pest work, no biohazards.
• We do not move heavy furniture. We clean behind and under what can be moved safely by one person.
• Oven, fridge, interior windows, inside cabinets and laundry are add-ons rather than defaults, because most homes do not need them every visit.

If we look at a surface and think the honest answer is a refinisher rather than a cleaner, we will say so. Etched glass, worn varnish and stone that has lost its seal are damage rather than dirt, and no amount of cleaning reverses them.

Signs it is not going well, and what to do

Most cleans go fine. When they do not, the signs show up early, and knowing them saves you a difficult conversation later. These apply to us as much as anyone.

1. The price changed on the day. A quote should hold unless the home is materially different from what was described, and that conversation should happen before anything starts, not after.
2. Nobody asked anything. A first visit with no questions usually means a standard route is being run regardless of your home.
3. The visible things are done and the hidden ones are not. Check behind the toilet, the shower door track and the sink taps. Those three tell you almost everything about how the rest was done.
4. The same thing is missed twice. Once is human. Twice means your notes are not travelling with the booking, which is a company problem rather than a cleaner problem.
5. You cannot get a straight answer about who is coming. You are entitled to know whether the person in your home is employed, subcontracted, or sent by an app.

If any of that happens with us, say so within 24 hours and we come back and put it right at no charge. We would rather be told than reviewed.

Tipping, and what cleaners actually want

Tipping is not expected in Toronto and our prices are not set assuming it. People often tip after a first deep clean, or once at the end of the year. Neither is required and nothing changes if you never do.

If you want to know what genuinely helps the person cleaning your home, it is not money. It is a clear parking situation, a working buzzer code, somewhere to fill a bucket, and being told about the broken cupboard door before they find it. And a review with their name in it, which is the one thing that follows a cleaner around and almost never gets given.

Afterwards, and the bit that matters most

Walk through it while it is fresh, and tell us within 24 hours if something was missed. We come back and put it right at no charge. That is the entire policy, and it is deliberately simpler than a refund conversation.

Feedback on the first visit is worth more than on any later one, because it sets what gets recorded on your file. Prefer the bathroom done a particular way, want the bins left out, hate a certain smell, need the cat kept in? Say it once after the first clean and it becomes how your home is done.

That is also the argument for a company that keeps notes. A clean that gets better over time is one where the file on your home is being added to. A clean that starts from zero every visit is one where nobody wrote anything down.

Then what

Most Toronto households settle on every two weeks. Weekly suits pets, small children, or a home that gets heavy use. Monthly works for a tidy household of one or two, though a monthly home drifts further between visits, so each one is a slightly bigger job.

Recurring pricing is lower per visit, and you can skip or reschedule with 24 hours' notice at no charge without losing your rate. Here is what the schedules actually cost across a year:

Worked on a 3 bed semi-detached.

Where this comes from

This one is our own practice rather than outside research: how we price, schedule and clean, written down. Where it quotes a number, that number is generated from the same pricing model as the calculator on this site. Nothing here is a claim about anyone else.