House Cleaning: What's Included (and What Isn't)

Nearly every misunderstanding about a cleaning service starts in the same place: the client and the cleaner are working from two different lists. One expected to come home to a tidied house and a gleaming oven interior; the other spent three hours washing surfaces, as always. Neither did anything wrong — they simply never agreed on what the service contained.

This guide exists to remove that ambiguity. What we do, what we don't, why certain things sit outside the job, and how an honest quote is put together for a home in Margem Sul or the Lisbon region.

Maintenance cleaning is not deep cleaning

This one distinction explains most of the rest.

Maintenance cleaning is the kind that repeats on a rhythm. It assumes the home is already at a certain standard and keeps it there: surfaces, sanitaryware, floors, dust, bins. It is quick precisely because it does not start from zero.

Deep cleaning is a reset. It gets inside the appliances and at established limescale, darkened grout, skirting boards, the tops of cupboards, and behind whatever can safely be moved. It takes considerably longer and it is not a weekly event — you do it once, then maintain it.

The practical consequence: if a home has not had a thorough clean in a long time, the first visit cannot be a maintenance clean. We say so upfront, even when it is not what someone wants to hear, because trying to pass a heavily accumulated house off as a maintenance visit ends in disappointment on both sides.

What a maintenance clean covers, room by room

• Kitchen: worktops, hob, appliance exteriors, sink and tap, cupboard fronts, floor, and bins emptied with waste separated.
• Bathrooms: WC, shower or bath, taps, mirrors, surface limescale, floor, and restocking whatever the client leaves out.
• Bedrooms: dust on reachable surfaces, vacuuming, floors, and a bed change when clean linen has been left in view.
• Living rooms: dusting, vacuuming or washing the floor according to the material, reachable interior glass.
• Circulation areas: hallways, internal stairs, doors, light switches and handles — the contact points almost nobody asks for and everybody notices.

What is not included — and why

This list is not a way of doing less. It is what stops a visit turning into a different job halfway through.

• Tidying up and organising belongings. Cleaning and tidying are separate trades. Every minute spent deciding where an object belongs is a minute that did not go on a surface. If you want the most out of a visit, leave worktops and floors clear.
• Shifting heavy furniture. A full wardrobe, a three-seater sofa or a built-in appliance cannot be moved by one person without risking the floor or a back. We clean what is reachable; if you want behind it done, we arrange it and send a team of two.
• Exterior glass at height. Nobody cleans a window leaning out of a fourth-floor bedroom. Ground-floor exterior glass, yes; above that it is work at height, needing different equipment and a separate assessment.
• Building dust. Dust from cutting brick and plasterboard is fine, gets into everything and settles again two or three times over. That is post-construction cleaning, with its own method and filtration — not a house clean with extra effort.
• Mould and damp. Wiping a product over the stain on a bedroom ceiling removes the stain, not the cause, and in two months it is back. If the source is a leak or condensation, the route is moisture detection before any painting.
• Upholstery and mattresses in depth. Vacuuming a sofa is included; deep stain extraction is upholstery cleaning, with its own machine and drying time.
• Laundry in volume. Washing, drying and ironing quantity is laundry and linen. It can run alongside a clean, but it is counted separately because it takes different time and equipment.
• Unsanitary situations. Biological waste, needles, extreme hoarding or animal mess in quantity need protection, proper waste routing and a different approach altogether. We say plainly when a case falls outside our scope.

Frequency is decided by the house, not the calendar

There is no universal answer. What actually weighs on it is how many people live there, whether there are pets, how many bathrooms exist, what the flooring is made of and how hard the kitchen gets used. A two-bedroom flat shared by two people who often eat out does not wear the same way as a three-bedroom home with children, a dog and a kitchen in daily use.

One thing worth knowing: the further apart the visits, the closer each visit gets to a deep clean — and the longer it takes. Spacing them out does not lighten the work; it trades short frequent visits for long heavy ones.

Products and the surfaces that don't forgive

Some materials are permanently damaged by the wrong product, and this is where an uninformed clean leaves a mark instead of a result:

• Natural stone (marble, travertine): no acid, and that includes vinegar and ordinary descalers. Acid etches the polish and the dullness does not come out.
• Wood and laminate: never washed with standing water. Water gets into the joints, swells the board and lifts the edges.
• Induction hobs and stainless steel: no abrasives. The scratch is permanent and catches the light forever after.
• Screens and televisions: the right cloth only, never glass cleaner.

If you have delicate surfaces, tell us before the first visit — and if you would rather we used your own products on them, we will. When in doubt we ask instead of improvising, which saves everyone the trouble.

How the quote is built

We work on quotation, and what moves it is concrete: floor area and number of rooms, how many bathrooms, the starting condition of the home, the agreed frequency, whether there are pets, how easy access and parking are, and extras such as appliance interiors or glass. The fastest route to a figure is to send photographs of the rooms over WhatsApp; where the home is large or its condition is hard to judge from photos, we arrange a site visit.

What to have ready

Clear surfaces and floors, clean linen left in view if you want beds changed, valuables put away, and a clear word on what matters most to you — if there were only time for two rooms, which two? That is the single most useful thing a client can tell us.

We work Monday to Saturday, 9am to 8pm, closed on Sunday. If something is left short, we return to put it right: satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.

Ready to go ahead? Message us on WhatsApp with the size of the home and a few photographs, and get a house cleaning quote with no obligation.