Run a vacuum through a house with two shedding dogs and the hair turns up in places nobody thinks to look: the baseboard vents, the underside of the dining chairs, the four inch gap between the fridge and the cabinet. We have cleaned Portland homes since 2005, and animals change the work more than almost anything else in a house.
Almost every cleaning company in town says it is pet friendly. On its own the phrase means very little. Usually it means nobody uses bleach. That is part of it, and it is the starting point for our own eco-friendly cleaning services, but the questions below are the ones that actually separate a service that can handle your house from one that will struggle with it, and you can ask them of any company, us included.
Ask what they will not clean up after an animal
Start here, because it is the answer most companies bury. We do not handle pet messes or body fluids. No litter boxes, no bird guano, no urine, feces, vomit or blood, no overflowed toilets. Cleanup involving blood falls under Oregon OSHA’s bloodborne pathogens rule, which covers employers whose staff are exposed to blood or other potentially infectious materials and expects an exposure control plan and trained staff. We do not maintain that program, so we leave every kind of animal or human mess alone, including the ones the rule would not strictly cover. If a cleaner arrives to find a fresh accident on the rug, that is one thing we have to leave alone.
That is not a small detail if you have an aging cat or a puppy still learning. It means accident cleanup stays with you, or it goes to a restoration specialist who is set up for it. Ask any company you are considering the same thing in plain terms: if my dog has an accident the morning of the visit, what happens? A vague answer now becomes a guessing game on the day it matters.
We also do not shampoo carpets. Vacuuming keeps surface hair down. It does nothing about urine that has soaked into the pad, and no maintenance clean will fix that, ours or anyone else’s.
Ask who brings the vacuum
Pet allergy comes from proteins in an animal’s dander, saliva and urine, and the hair carries them around the house. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America recommends vacuuming fabric furniture and carpets weekly with a HEPA-filter vacuum. We bring our own HEPA filtration vacuums. If a company uses whatever is in your hall closet instead, you are relying on your own filter and your own upkeep, which is fine if you stay on top of it and a slow problem if you do not.
The second half of that question is cloths. We use washable microfiber rather than working through paper towels. Fine hair clings to microfiber instead of drifting off the cloth and settling somewhere else in the room, which is most of the reason hard floors in pet homes look clean for about a day after a bad wipe down. More on getting hair out of upholstery and rugs in common cleaning issues and what actually fixes them.
Ask how the crew gets in, and where the animals will be
You have to give us a reliable way into the house. Our cleaners may arrive within an hour either side of the scheduled start, and if it is going to be longer than that we call. If we cannot get in, the visit is charged in full. So a plan that depends on you being home to open the door is a plan that eventually costs you money.
Animals complicate that in an obvious way. A dog that bolts through an open front door, a cat who should not be meeting strangers, a lockbox on a house where the dog is loose in the entry: sort all of it out before the first visit rather than during it. Say where the animals will be and who is responsible for putting them there. Any arrangement needs to hold across the full arrival window.
Mention nervous animals up front. Vacuums are loud, crews move fast, and a scared dog behind a door it can open is worse for everyone than a scared dog in a crate. Some households leave for the visit. Some do not need to. Either is workable as long as the company knows in advance.
Ask whether you get the same crew
The same cleaners coming back to the same house is the single thing that makes a home with animals easier to clean well. They learn that the grey cat hides under the bed, that the back gate does not latch, that the bowl by the sink is a water dish and not a dirty dish.
We send the same crew back to the same home wherever we can. Illness, time off and staff changes still happen. When they do, we do not call ahead to tell you a different cleaner is coming. What we do is hand the substitute the full current notes on your home, animals included. Ask any company both halves of that question: do you send the same people, and what happens when you cannot? Nobody can honestly promise the same faces every single visit, so the answer to the second half is the one worth listening to.
Our staff are screened with pre employment checks before hiring, and the company is licensed, bonded and insured. That is table stakes for anyone you hand a key to, but ask anyway. Our recurring house cleaning runs weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, and the longer the run, the more the crew knows your house.
Ask what is in the bottles
We use Mrs. Meyer’s on general surfaces, Bona on hardwood and Bon Ami for scouring. No bleach, no ammonia, no synthetic fragrance. The formulas are plant based and biodegradable. That is the whole list, and any company cleaning your floors should be able to name theirs without going to check.
If you want a claim proven rather than asserted, look for a third-party mark on the bottle and check it with the organization behind it. EPA Safer Choice, for example, only labels a product after the manufacturer discloses every ingredient to the program and to a qualified third-party profiler. Green Seal and UL ECOLOGO also certify against published criteria. The words green, natural and non toxic on a label involve nothing like that. We go into what to check on a label in our guide to pet safe cleaning products.
Ask what falls outside a routine clean
Every company has limits. The useful ones publish them. Here are ours that come up most in homes with animals:
- We do not move furniture over 20 pounds, so if you want the hair out from under the sofa, the sofa needs moving before we arrive.
- We do not clean above 8 feet.
- We do not clean outdoor areas, which covers patios, decks, garages, unfinished basements and exterior windows. The muddy dog run stays outside our scope.
- We do not wash dishes, and we do not strip beds, though we will make a bed if the sheets are laid out.
- We do not clean rooms heavily affected by mold.
None of that is unusual for a residential cleaning company. What varies is whether you learn it at booking or on the day.
When a routine visit stops being enough
Maintenance cleaning holds a line. It does not reset one. In a house with animals the hair works down into carpet fiber, baseboards pick up a film, the grout in the mudroom goes dark, and the top of the fridge collects a layer nobody has looked at since spring. We suggest a deep clean about twice a year on top of the regular visits. It costs extra because it takes considerably longer, and homes with two or three animals tend to reach that point sooner than homes with none.
Odor is the honest exception. If a smell has settled into carpet padding or subfloor, a deep clean is not the answer and neither is a stronger product. That is a job for someone who does restoration, and any cleaning company telling you otherwise is selling you a repeat visit.
The scheduling details worth knowing before you book
Our minimum is a two hour visit and a $133 minimum service charge. Cancelling inside 48 hours is charged at half the service, which is worth remembering if the thing that usually derails your week is a vet appointment. Recurring clients can reschedule three times a year. Cleaning visits run Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
If something is not right after a visit, we do not give discounts, but we will come back and touch up the areas you point out. We need to hear about it within 24 hours, so walk the house the same day rather than the following week.
Get a quote
Call 1 888 404 7930 or email info@greenearthhousecleaning.com. Tell us how many animals, where they will be during the visit, and which rooms take the worst of it. Quotes are free with no obligation, and we serve the Portland Metro Area.
