Most people who call us are already using someone else. They are not calling because the house is dirty. They are calling because a stranger showed up last Tuesday, the invoice was higher than the last one, and nobody at the office picked up the phone. We have been cleaning houses in Portland since 2005, and the complaints have barely changed since.
Here is what actually goes wrong, and the questions that would have caught each one before you signed up. We answer them for ourselves below so you can see what a straight answer looks like.
A different cleaner every visit
This is one of the most common reasons people leave a cleaning company. It is also the one that sounds least serious until you live with it.
A cleaner who has been in your house six times knows the guest bath is only used at Christmas, that the dog bed goes back under the window, and that you do not want the dining table polished. A cleaner on their first visit knows none of that, so you either write a note every week or you accept that the result will be generic. Rotating staff is usually a symptom of turnover, and turnover is usually a symptom of how the company pays and schedules its people.
Ask: who will be in my home, and will it be the same person next month? We send the same cleaners back to the same home. If your regular cleaner is ever unavailable, whoever comes is briefed on your home and your checklist before they arrive.
A quote that turns out not to be a quote
An hourly rate quoted with no minimum attached tells you very little about what a visit will actually cost. Others quote a flat price that quietly excludes the first visit, which is priced as a deep clean without anyone saying the words.
Our numbers: the minimum service charge is $133, and the minimum visit is two hours. A quote costs nothing. If a home needs a deep clean first, we say so on the phone and price it separately, because it is an extra cost on top of maintenance cleaning. We recommend one roughly twice a year, not every visit.
Ask any company three things: is there a minimum charge, is the first visit priced differently, and what specifically triggers a higher price on a later visit. Ours are all answered on our house cleaning cost page.
Nobody showed up, or somebody showed up at 7 a.m.
Cleaning is route work. A job that runs long pushes every stop behind it, and a company that pretends otherwise is setting you up to be annoyed.
So we tell people up front: our cleaners may arrive within an hour either side of the scheduled time. Visits happen Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The office is reachable Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM. If cleaning outside business hours matters to you, that is something we arrange for offices rather than homes. Either way, we would rather you know now than find out in month three.
Ask what the arrival window is. If the answer is a precise time with no window at all, ask what happens when the job before yours runs long.
The cancellation fee you did not know existed
Almost every cleaning company has one. Very few mention it before the first invoice carries it, which is where most of the anger comes from. The fee itself is not unreasonable. A cleaner who loses a job at 8 a.m. cannot fill that slot, and they still need to be paid.
Ours, in plain terms: cancel inside 48 hours and you are charged half the service. If our cleaners arrive and cannot get in, the full service is charged. That second one catches people more often than the first. A code that was changed, a deadbolt thrown from the inside, a dog left loose in the entry, a garage remote with a dead battery.
Sort out access before the first visit, not on the morning of it. Whatever company you hire, get the cancellation window and the lockout policy in writing, and check whether the fee is a flat amount or a percentage of the service.
Something broke and nobody would say who pays
Things do get broken. Anyone who cleans houses for long enough will eventually break something. What matters is whether the company carries real coverage and whether the person who broke it was ever screened.
We are licensed, bonded and insured, and every cleaner goes through a pre-employment background check. Bonded and insured are not the same thing, and companies use the words loosely, so ask which one they actually carry and ask for the certificate. An independent cleaner working solo often carries neither, which can be a fine tradeoff at a lower price as long as you are making that choice knowingly.
We also reduce the odds. Our cleaners do not move furniture over 20 lb and do not clean above 8 feet. That is a ladder-and-back-injury rule as much as a breakage rule.
Nobody told you what they will not do
A company that says yes to everything on the sales call says no later, in your kitchen, to your face. We would rather put the list on the website.
We do not shampoo carpets. We do not clean inside fireplaces or chandeliers. We do not handle pet messes or body fluids, because we do not hold bloodborne pathogen certification, and that includes litter boxes. We do not clean outdoor surfaces: patios, decks, garages, exterior windows. We do not do dishes. We do not clean rooms with heavy mold damage, and we do not clean after fumigation.
One more that surprises people: if you want the inside of the oven cleaned, run the self-clean cycle one or two days before the visit. Our cleaners wipe out the ash. They do not scrape burnt-on carbon with oven chemicals, because the products that make that fast are exactly the products we do not carry.
Our full list of limits and policies sits on the FAQ page. Before you book anyone, ask for theirs.
Green claims that fall apart after one question
Anyone can print the word natural on a van. The test is whether the company can name the products in the caddy.
Ours are short to list. Mrs. Meyer’s for general surfaces, Bona for hardwood, Bon Ami for scouring. No bleach, no ammonia, no synthetic fragrance, ever. We bring our own vacuums with HEPA filtration, and we clean with washable microfiber cloths rather than paper towels.
The certifications worth anything on a label are EPA Safer Choice, Green Seal and UL ECOLOGO. Everything else is marketing. Fragrance is a common asthma trigger and volatile organic compounds contribute to indoor air pollution, and those are the honest reasons to care about what gets sprayed in a closed house. We are not going to tell you conventional cleaners cause disease, because that is not something we can stand behind.
We have written more about reading a label and what the marketing terms actually mean in our guide to green cleaning, and about which homemade recipes hold up in our post on natural cleaning that works. Short version on the most common one: vinegar is not a disinfectant. It dissolves mineral scale and soap scum. It is not a degreaser and it will not sanitize anything.
The five questions worth asking anyone
- Will the same cleaner come back, and what happens when they are out?
- Is there a minimum charge, and is the first visit priced differently from the rest?
- What is the arrival window, and what is the cancellation and lockout policy?
- Are you bonded, insured, or both, and are cleaners background checked?
- Name the products you bring, and tell me what you will not clean.
A company that can answer all five in one phone call is usually a company that has thought about the answers. Hesitation on the last two is the one to watch.
If you want a quote from us
We are locally owned, based on SE Hawthorne, and we clean across the Portland Metro area. Our rating is 4.6 out of 5 across 65 Google reviews, which we mention because it is a real number and not a perfect one.
Call 1 888 404 7930, or read what a standard visit covers on our house cleaning page. The quote is free and we will tell you on the phone if we are not the right fit.
