We clean from the ceiling down

Deep cleaning gets the buildup weekly cleaning misses

We work from the top of each room down, because dust falls. First come the ceiling corners, the light fixtures, the fan blades and the tops of door frames. Then the walls and switch plates, then the cabinet fronts. The floors come last, after everything above them has dropped its dust. If you mop first and dust second, you get gray streaks on a clean floor and have to mop again.

The kitchen and the bathrooms take the most time. In the kitchen, cooking grease settles on the cabinet doors and the range hood. Dust sticks to it and turns into a tacky brown layer that a dry cloth just smears around. We let a degreaser sit on it before we wipe, then rinse with clean water. In the bathroom, the work is soap film on the tile and the white scale that builds up around the base of the faucet.

When a deep clean is done right, you notice it in places you do not usually look. Run a finger along the top of a door frame and it comes away clean. The baseboards are one even color from end to end, with no dark line where the mop used to stop. The shower tile has no soap film left on it. One Google reviewer wrote that the "services were detailed and thorough."

• High dusting from ceiling corners to light fixtures
• Baseboards and door frames wiped by hand
• Kitchen cabinet fronts degreased top to bottom
• Shower scale and soap film scrubbed off
• Floors done last, edges and corners included

Furnace season fills Helena homes with dust

Helena has a long heating season, and a forced-air furnace moves the same air through the house all winter. Each time it cycles, it blows fine dust out of the registers. That dust settles on window sills and the tops of door frames. Dry winter air adds static, so dust also clings to walls and plastic light covers instead of dropping to the floor. By spring, the registers themselves have a gray fringe on the slats. We wipe those covers during a deep clean, or the next furnace cycle blows the dust right back out.

Many homes around Helena and Montana City also heat with a wood or pellet stove. A stove puts out fine ash that settles on nearby walls and shelves, and it travels farther than most people expect. Summer brings its own problem when wildfire smoke sits in the valley for days. Smoke leaves an oily film on windows and counters and a smell that hangs on in fabric. A deep clean after smoke season washes that film off hard surfaces instead of smearing it around.

Winter roads around Helena get sanded, and plenty of that grit comes home on boots. Spring adds mud once the snow starts to melt. The grit gets ground into the entry floor and packed into corners the vacuum head cannot reach. Every trip across it scratches wood and vinyl a little more. On a deep clean we lift the entry mats and wash the floor under them. The edges and corners get done by hand, because that is where the grit collects.

Older Helena homes take more careful cleaning

A large share of Helena's housing is old. Near downtown and on the west side you find brick homes and wood-frame Victorians with plaster walls and original wood trim. That trim often carries decades of old varnish, and a strong cleaner can cloud it or strip it in patches. So on older woodwork we start with the mildest cleaner that will lift the dirt, and we test it somewhere out of sight first.

Across the Helena Valley, the ranch houses and split-levels built after the war need a different kind of care. Some still have their original bathroom tile, with wide grout lines that soak up soap and body oil. Older porcelain and cast iron tubs scratch if you scrub them with anything gritty, and a scratched finish stains faster. We use soft pads on old fixtures and spend our time on the grout instead of reaching for something harsher.

Newer homes in Montana City and the subdivisions around Helena are built differently, with open floor plans and vaulted ceilings. The hard part in these houses is height. Dust and cobwebs build up on exposed beams and the tops of tall windows, well out of reach from the floor. In an open plan, dust knocked loose over the kitchen lands on the living room floor too. So we clear every high spot in the whole space before we touch a counter or a floor.

Skipping a step brings the dirt back

Most of what goes wrong on a deep clean comes from shortcuts. The most common one is leaving cleaner on a surface without rinsing it. Soap residue on a floor or a counter feels clean for a day. Then it holds on to the dust and grit that land on it. Before long the floor looks dull and gray again. We rinse and dry what we wash, so nothing is left behind for new dirt to stick to.

Another shortcut is skipping what you cannot see from the floor. The tops of kitchen cabinets and the ledge over a door frame collect grease and dust for years. If they get skipped, the house can still smell stale when everything else looks done. Air from the furnace can also stir that dust up and carry it onto the counters you just cleaned. A deep clean that stops at eye level is only a long regular clean.

Doing things out of order is the last shortcut. Wiping the counters before dusting the cabinets above them means doing the counters twice. Vacuuming before the baseboards are wiped leaves their dust on the carpet. On an old wood floor, too much water soaks into the seams and makes the boards swell at the edges. We set the order before we start, and we use as little water on wood as the job allows.