You might think that if you hire a cleaning service to come and deal with your mess, you can promptly ignore the whole subject and let the housecleaners deal with everything—after all, that’s the whole point of paying someone to clean your house. But if you want your cleaning service to be as effective as possible—and your house to be as clean as possible—there’s some prep work you should do before the cleaners arrive.
Yes, you need to clean some things before your professional cleaners show up, because you want to maximize the benefit that pro cleaners bring to your house. Otherwise, they’ll waste time and energy (and your money) fighting an uphill battle. If you want to get the most out of your professional house cleaners, here are the pre-cleaning steps you need to take.
Declutter
The number one thing you should do to prepare for a professional cleaning service is to pick up your stuff and declutter. If your cleaners have to pick up and move stuff out of their way, they’ll spend less time actually cleaning, and they probably won’t put everything exactly where you want it. A few key areas to declutter include:
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Floors. Clear the way for vacuums and mops.
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Counters. Make it easy for your cleaners to dust and wipe down surfaces. This includes putting small appliances away and clearing all those primping tools off the bathroom sink or counter.
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Valuables and private stuff. Don’t leave stuff sitting out that you wouldn’t want strangers seeing or interacting with.
Organize laundry
The line between house cleaners and housekeepers can be a fuzzy one, and laundry is one chore that not every cleaning service does. If your house cleaner is going to do the laundry as part of their usual visit, you should organize it before they arrive. That means gathering it all into a central place and (possibly) sorting it at least into whites and colors. You should also separate out anything intended for the dry cleaners, and any delicate items that require special handling. You can either do those yourself or leave specific instructions, but never assume the cleaning pros will automatically know what needs to be done.
You should also make sure you’re stocked with detergent, fabric softeners, and anything else you expect your cleaners to use while washing your clothes.
Do the dishes
Some house cleaners will do dishes if you leave them in the sink, but many won’t, and for some, it’s an add-on service you pay for. Obviously, if your cleaning service includes the dishes, you should let them handle it. But if your service isn’t going to handle the dishes for you, don’t leave a pile of dirty ones in the sink that will get in the way of your cleaners’ efforts to scrub the sink and the surrounding area. Plus, a pile of dirty dishes implies you’re trying to get the cleaners to wash them even though it’s not their job.
Fragile and personal stuff
Anything in your house that’s fragile or that requires special handling, you should clean yourself. If it requires a memo to explain the process to your cleaners, the chances that they will fail to do everything correctly (or even damage the items) will not be zero.
You should also make sure that anything intimate and personal, like financial documents or personal letters, isn’t left out. This should be part of your decluttering routine mentioned above, but it’s worth doing an extra sweep of the house. You don’t want your house cleaners to know your business, your house cleaners don’t want to know your business, and if you’d rather not have something touched or moved, you shouldn’t leave it out.
Clean out the fridge
Note I didn’t write clean the fridge—your house cleaners should handle the actual cleaning of your refrigerator. But if you want a truly sparkling refrigerator, don’t leave it packed full of old plastic storage bowls, takeout containers, and dubiously wrinkled produce. The more time your cleaners have to spend tossing all that stuff into the garbage for you, the less time they’ll have for actually cleaning your appliance, so take a few minutes and clean the fridge out as thoroughly as possible. If there’s an obvious spill in there, you should probably mop it up, but otherwise, you can leave the actual detail work to the professionals.
Clean the litterbox
If you have a cat as a pet, clean out the litterbox before your cleaners arrive. Check with the company’s policy—some house cleaners won’t touch a litterbox at all, while others are happy to move it in order to clean under and around it. But considering what a litterbox is typically full of, it’s a simple courtesy to make sure it’s clean before you expect someone to get down close to it and possibly handle it.