What an apartment or condo cleaning covers
Our cleaners work through a Los Angeles apartment or condo in a set order, from the entry inward and from high surfaces down to the floor. What you tell us on the call about the building, the kitchen's size and your bathroom's quirks decides the shape of the visit.
1. Getting in: parking, courtyard, stairs, elevator, front desk
A courtyard gate code or buzzer, where to park or stand in a loading zone, the exterior stairs or the elevator, a front-desk check-in. All of this gets agreed on the call before the day of the visit. Lockbox and keypad arrangements get written down the same way.
2. A compact kitchen
The compact kitchen gets the counters cleared and wiped, the sink and faucet, and the stovetop with its knobs. We wipe cabinet and appliance fronts, the fridge outside, and the splash of grease on the wall beside the stove. The microwave is cleaned inside and out, and the fridge and oven get done inside on request.
3. The bathroom, with hard water on glass and chrome
The shower glass and tile come first, with the mineral film wiped off the glass, chrome and the grout, and we work the grout lines around the tub and the base of the toilet. The vanity, mirror and light cover are worked from the floor, the exhaust fan cover gets wiped, and the floor comes last.
4. Living space and bedroom, dusted from the floor
High dusting with no step stool, counter or chair for a stand-up: light fixtures, the tops of door frames and bookshelves worked from the floor. We wipe surfaces and go over a balcony slider's glass from the inside. Beds get made or linens changed where we have been asked.
5. Floors last
Carpets vacuumed, hard floors vacuumed and mopped. City code counts streets and gutters as part of the storm drain system, and bars anything but stormwater from it unless a permit or listed exemption allows it.
| Building | What changes for a cleaning | What to tell us when you call |
|---|---|---|
| A courtyard apartment with exterior stairs | Access by exterior stairs and walkways | Parking, gate code, the stair we use |
| A dingbat or small stucco apartment | A postwar stucco box apartment | Where to park, which door is yours |
| A mid-rise with an elevator | Elevator reservation sometimes needed | Elevator rules, which entry |
| A high-rise with a front desk | Check-in and ID at the desk | What to say at the desk, which unit |
| A condo in a small HOA building | Building rules the HOA has in writing | Any HOA cleaning rules, parking spot |
Hallways, laundry rooms, courtyards and shared trash areas belong to the building, not to a home cleaning.
When apartment cleaning fits, and when another visit does
When this is the right call
- You live in the apartment or condo and want a regular visit or a one-off.
- A studio or one-bedroom where the kitchen and bath carry most of the work.
- A condo with a front desk and a parking rule you want sorted on the call.
When a different service is a better fit
- The unit is empty between leases. That is an empty unit at move-out, and the new place after.
- You want a thorough clean of the parts a regular visit skips. That is a deep clean.
- You want a schedule to keep it there week after week. That is a regular maid service.
What a visit covers in your unit
What a cleaning covers is agreed before any work starts, with what matters most on your list first. Products are something we go over on the call: ours or yours. High dusting happens from the floor; no step stools, counters or tub edges. For apartment and condo buildings LA Sanitation serves, the green bin is one bin per property shared by all units, so a cleaner never assumes a unit has its own. Mold is small surface spots on tile and grout only; anything spreading or after a leak goes to a mold professional.
From the call to the day of the clean
- You call and tell us about the apartment or condo: bedrooms and bathrooms, the kitchen, pets, parking, the building and how we get in.
- We go over the scope with you and anything the building rules say about cleaning crews.
- You get a price and decide.
- The cleaning, and a last look together before we leave.
Apartment buildings and condos in Los Angeles
About 48 percent of the city's housing units sit in buildings of five or more units. Around Koreatown, renters occupy about 95 percent of homes, and about 3 percent of units are detached houses.
What a visit in a Los Angeles apartment or condo looks like depends partly on the building type. SurveyLA counts bungalow courts among the city's apartment types, as a multi-family type found throughout Los Angeles, most often built in Craftsman and Spanish Colonial Revival styles. The dingbat, the stucco box apartment of 1954 to 1968, was once common across parts of the city. What the caller tells us about building access decides much of the visit.
Half of renter households in the city live in a studio or one-bedroom, where the kitchen and the bath carry most of the work. For apartment and condo buildings LA Sanitation serves, each unit gets its own black and blue bins, and the property has one shared green bin, which means food scraps from a cleaning cannot assume a per-unit green bin.