Most calls we get start the same way. Someone wants a cleaning service. Then we ask what the house looks like right now, when it was last cleaned, and whether they are staying or leaving, and it turns out they meant one of about eight different jobs. A bi-weekly visit and a move out clean share a vacuum and not much else.
Here is how the main home cleaning services and house cleaning services differ, what each one costs relative to the others, and how to tell which one your home needs. Get this wrong and the quote will be wrong too, because the house cleaners show up sized for the wrong job. If you already know you want regular house cleaning in Portland, that page covers what a standard cleaning service includes.
What are the main types of home cleaning services?
Most home cleaning services fall into eight types: recurring maintenance cleaning, one-time cleaning, deep cleaning, move out cleaning, move in cleaning, apartment cleaning, short-term rental turnovers and estate cleanouts, with office cleaning alongside. They differ in how much has built up, whether anyone lives there, and how much detail the visit must reach.
The quickest way to place yourself:
- Recurring house cleaning: the home is in reasonable shape and you want it to stay there.
- One-time cleaning: you need the house done once, before guests or after a busy stretch.
- Deep cleaning: the house is behind, or it has never had a thorough clean.
- Move out cleaning and move in cleaning: the home is empty, or about to be.
- Apartment cleaning: a smaller footprint, usually with parking and building access to sort out.
- Airbnb and short-term rental cleaning: a turnover between guests.
- Estate cleanout cleaning: a house that has just been emptied after a death or a sale.
- Office cleaning: a small workplace rather than a home.
What does standard house cleaning include?
A standard cleaning, also called general cleaning or regular cleaning, covers the rooms you use every day. The kitchen gets countertops, sink, appliance exteriors and floor. Every bathroom gets a professional scrub top to bottom, toilets included. Every reachable surface is dusted, carpets are vacuumed, hardwood floors and other hard floors are mopped, trash goes out and beds get made.
That is the baseline nearly every home cleaning service builds on, and it is worth checking any quote from house cleaning services against it. The house cleaners bring their own vacuums and products; ours are non-toxic in every room, and on hardwood floors we use a cleaner made for the finish. Bedrooms get dusted and vacuumed, and the bed is made with sheets you lay out.
What a standard cleaning leaves out is the slow-building work: inside the oven and cabinets, baseboards washed rather than dusted, window tracks, grout. That is what a deep clean is for, and it is the most common gap between what people expect and what a standard cleaning service covers. If you have cleaning preferences, like a room to skip or a surface that needs special attention, say so when you book, because the team plans around the notes on your home.
Recurring house cleaning: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly
Recurring house cleaning is maintenance. The house is already in reasonable shape, and a regular cleaning every one, two or four weeks keeps it there: bathroom, kitchen, floors, dust, and the bedrooms and rooms you actually live in. It is the most common of the home cleaning services, and the one that gets easier, and better, the longer it runs.
That last part is what people miss. On the first visit the house cleaners are dealing with everything that has built up since the last real clean. By the third or fourth, they are dealing with two weeks of ordinary life, so more of the time goes to the corners that never got attention before. That is the whole argument for a schedule: a clean home all the time, not once in a while. We compared the three frequencies in detail in weekly, bi-weekly or monthly cleaning.
We send the same team back wherever possible, but illness, time off and staff changes mean it is not a promise, and we do not call ahead when a substitute is coming. The substitute gets the full current notes on your home. Visits run Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and recurring clients can reschedule three times a year.
One-time and occasional cleaning
A one-time or occasional cleaning is the same work as a regular cleaning service, booked once. People book it before hosting, after a stretch where the house got away from them, or to try a company before committing. It costs more than a recurring visit on the same home, because more has built up since anyone last cleaned it properly.
A single visit to a house that has not been properly cleaned in a year will not match the fourth visit of a recurring plan. So describe the house honestly when you ask for the quote. House cleaners booked for two hours in a house that needs five run out of time, and nobody enjoys that afternoon. One-time cleanings are paid on the day of service.
Deep clean: the thorough cleaning a standard visit skips
A deep clean targets what a standard cleaning skips by design: baseboards, door frames, window sills, tile grout, behind and under what can be moved, built-up kitchen grease. It takes longer because most of it is dwell time and hand work, and it is billed as an extra cost on top of maintenance.
Soap scum is the clearest example. Portland’s Bull Run supply is soft water, typically 7 to 11 parts per million of total hardness according to the Portland Water Bureau. So the film on most shower doors here is soap and body oil rather than the mineral crust people fight in hard water cities. It comes off with a mild abrasive and patience. We use Bon Ami on it. A stronger product does not speed it up.
We suggest a deep clean about twice a year alongside whatever regular schedule you keep. If your house has never had one, that is the right first booking rather than a general cleaning.
Move out and move in cleaning
Move out and move in cleaning are the same job pointed in opposite directions. Both are one-time jobs in an empty home, which makes them more thorough than cleaning an occupied house: nothing to work around, every cupboard open. Move out is aimed at whoever inspects next. Move in runs before your boxes arrive.
The time goes where a landlord or buyer looks: inside cabinets, the fridge, the oven, every bathroom and the baseboards. Two limits. We vacuum carpets but do not shampoo carpets, so a lease that asks for professional carpet cleaning needs a separate contractor. And run the oven’s self-clean cycle a day or two before we arrive; we do not remove oven doors.
Apartment cleaning
Apartment cleaning is house cleaning sized for smaller apartments, with its own practical problems: building access, stairs or elevators, and parking. The cleaning list is the same as a house. The difference is that a studio or one-bedroom often needs less time than the minimum visit, so the minimum charge, not the square footage, sets the price.
Our minimum service charge is $133 for a two-hour minimum visit. On our published price table, a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly schedule sits at that minimum. Depending on location, parking is the other line item: any parking fee the team has to pay to reach you is added to the invoice, so tell us about the building when you ask for a quote.
Airbnb and short-term rental turnovers
A short-term rental turnover is a reset between guests: bathroom, kitchen, floors, surfaces and beds, done to the same standard every time so the next review is not about the last guest. It differs from home cleaning mainly in timing. The work has to fit between a checkout and the next check-in.
So be clear about ours before you build a calendar around us. We clean Monday to Friday between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM, with an arrival window of an hour either side of the appointment. A Saturday checkout cannot be turned on Saturday. We make beds with linens you leave out, but we do not strip beds or wash dishes, so plan for both. For hosts whose turnovers land on weekdays with some slack, it works well.
Estate cleanout cleaning
Estate cleanout cleaning is a one-time deep clean of a house that has already been emptied, after a death, an estate sale or a move into care. We are the clean at the end of a cleanout, not the truck. Once the property is clear, the house cleaners clean it for a listing or a handover.
The order matters. We do not clear belongings, empty storage or take anything away, and crews do not move anything over 20 pounds. Book the removal first and the clean once it is complete. An empty house is more efficient to clean, and costs less, than one that is still half full.
Office cleaning
Office cleaning covers small workplaces: studios, salons, shops and small offices. The work is more repetitive than a home, with the same restrooms, the same break room sink and the same entry floor collecting a Portland winter of wet grit. What an office needs most is consistency and a schedule that fits around the people working in it.
The constraint is hours. Our office cleaning service runs on the same weekday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM schedule as home visits, and we do not run evening, overnight or weekend crews. A workspace that can be cleaned while people are in it suits us. A large floor that can only be cleaned after hours needs a different company.
Is maid service the same as house cleaning?
Yes. Maid service is the older name for recurring house cleaning, and the two terms buy the same thing. It does not mean a live-in role, and it does not include dishes, which we do not do. House cleaners arrive, clean the house top to bottom, and leave. Linen service is available if you ask ahead.
We do not strip beds. Lay clean sheets out and the house cleaners will make the bed with them.
What to look for in house cleaners and house cleaning services
Look for house cleaning professionals: a team that is licensed, bonded and insured, publishes its prices and its limits, and actually serves your location. Ask who brings the supplies, how the cleaners work around pets, and what happens when a detail gets missed. Quality shows in what a company writes down before the first visit, not in adjectives.
Ours, for comparison. We are licensed, bonded and insured, and every cleaner is screened before hiring. We bring our own supplies and vacuums. Crews cover all of Portland plus Beaverton, Tigard, Lake Oswego, Happy Valley and Milwaukie, and they do not cross the river to Vancouver, WA; the full list is on our service areas page. A family with pets gets the same non-toxic products as everyone else, because those are the only ones we carry.
“I’ve had monthly cleanings for the last 6 months with Green Earth and have had a great experience. Cleaners are kind, thorough, and dependable.” That is Tyler Baker, in a Google review. It is the kind of review worth looking for when hiring: specific about the schedule and the people, not just the stars.
How much do home cleaning services cost?
Square footage and condition move the price more than the label does, but the order is consistent. A recurring visit on a maintained home is the cheapest per visit. A one-time clean on the same home costs more, a deep clean more again, and a move out clean of an entire home is usually the largest number.
Our published figures for a three bedroom, two bathroom home in average condition show the gap. A bi-weekly visit is estimated at $150 to $190, a one-time clean at $215 to $275, and a first visit or deep clean at around $290. Every visit starts from the $133 minimum. The full table by home size and frequency is on our Portland house cleaning cost page.
People also ask what to pay a home cleaner by the hour. Our $133 minimum covers a two-hour minimum visit, which works out at $67 per hour the crew is on site. That rate is for the crew, not per cleaner. When you compare house cleaning companies, ask every professional cleaning service the same question, because an hourly rate per cleaner and a rate per team can sound alike on the phone and cost very different amounts. You pay on the day for one-time visits; recurring plans move to invoicing after the first two months.
What do none of these services include?
Some work is excluded whichever service you book. We do not clean pet messes, body fluids or litter boxes, shampoo carpets, wash dishes, or clean inside fireplaces. We do not clean outdoor areas, move furniture over 20 pounds, work above 8 feet, or clean chandeliers. We do not clean rooms heavily affected by mold, or after fumigation.
The mold one comes up more here than it would in a dry climate. Some pink or orange mildew is normal in a Portland bathroom, and we clean it. A room with a genuine mold problem is different: wiping the surface does not solve it. The EPA’s home guidance says that where mold covers more than about 10 square feet, or there has been a lot of water damage, you should consult its mold remediation guidance rather than treat it as a cleaning job. We refer those homes to Portland Mold Solution.
How do you choose between house cleaning companies?
Start with the state of the house, not the label. In decent shape and you want it kept there: recurring. Behind: deep clean first, then a schedule. Moving: move out or move in, booked for the day the place is empty. Then compare two or three house cleaning companies quoting the same job.
Oregon’s Department of Justice gives the same advice for any work on your home: research the business, get bids from several and check references before you hire. For home cleaners services, add four questions of your own. Is the quote per cleaner or per team? What does a late cancellation cost? What happens if something gets missed? And what happens if the cleaner arrives and cannot get in? We charge the full service in that case, so a reliable way in, a person at home, a key or a lockbox, matters.
Ours: cancelling inside 48 hours is charged at half the service, and if something is missed, tell us within 24 hours and we come back to touch it up. We do not give discounts. We wrote up the rest of the vetting process in our guide to hiring a house cleaner in Portland, and what to expect before a first visit in booking cleaning services in Portland.
Not sure which one fits? Describe the house when you ask for a quote and we will tell you which service it sounds like, including when the answer is the cheaper one. Green Earth House Cleaning is locally owned and has cleaned Portland homes since 2005. Call 1 888 404 7930 or request a free quote.
