What a Standard House Cleaning Includes
Most people book a house clean without ever seeing the list. Here is ours, in full, along with the jobs that are deliberately not on it.
The short version
A standard clean covers the rooms you use and the surfaces in them. It runs two to four hours in most homes, and it is the same list every visit whether or not the week has been busy.
The same list is on the recurring house cleaning page, where it drives what your cleaner actually works through.
Room by room
Kitchen
- Counters and backsplash wiped down
- Sink scrubbed and the faucet polished
- Stovetop and control panel degreased
- Outside of the fridge, oven, dishwasher, and microwave
- Microwave cleaned inside
- Floor vacuumed and mopped
Bathrooms
- Tub and shower scrubbed, door tracks included
- Toilet cleaned inside, outside, and behind the base
- Sink, counter, and fixtures polished
- Mirror left streak-free
- Floor vacuumed and mopped
Bedrooms and living areas
- Reachable surfaces dusted, sills and baseboards included
- Light switches, door handles, and remotes wiped
- Beds made, and sheets changed if you leave fresh ones out
- Under beds and furniture vacuumed where it is accessible
- Floors vacuumed, hard floors mopped
Throughout the house
- Trash emptied and liners replaced
- Cobwebs taken out of corners and ceilings
- Mirrors and glass doors cleaned
- A walkthrough before your cleaner leaves
Supplies and equipment come with the cleaner. If you would rather we used something specific in your home, leave it out and say so.
What a standard clean does not cover
These are off the list on purpose, and it is better to read them now than to notice them later:
- Inside the fridge or the oven, which are add-ons at $35 and $35
- Exterior windows, or anything above two steps of a ladder
- Laundry beyond changing sheets, which is an add-on at $25 per load
- Dishes left in the sink, though we will run a dishwasher you have already started
- Moving furniture heavier than a dining chair
- Homes with an active pest problem, mold, or a biohazard
Interior windows are their own line at $6 each if you want them done, and they are usually worth doing seasonally rather than every visit.
When an add-on is the right answer
Add-ons exist for the jobs that are real but not weekly. The pattern that works for most households is to run the standard list on a schedule and drop an add-on in when the thing is actually due.
- Inside the oven, once or twice a year, or after a spill that has baked on
- Inside the fridge, after a clear-out or before hosting
- Interior windows, in spring and again in the fall
- Laundry, when a week has genuinely got away from you
Pick them per visit rather than committing to them. Nobody needs the oven done every two weeks.
When it is a deep clean instead
There is a point where adding items to a standard visit stops making sense, because the problem is accumulation rather than a missing task. Grout that has gone grey, baseboards with a furred top edge, a kitchen film that a counter wipe slides across: those are not add-ons, they are a different service with a different amount of time behind it.
We wrote the full comparison, including how to tell which one your house needs and what the difference costs, in deep clean or standard clean. The deep cleaning page carries that checklist in full.
An empty house is a third case again, since nothing has to be worked around. That one is the move-in and move-out service, and it is the only one where inside the oven and inside the fridge are part of the base price.
What it costs and how to start
A standard clean of a three-bedroom, two-bath home is $199 for a single visit. A two-bedroom is $159 and a one-bedroom is $129. Past three bedrooms each additional one adds $40, and a full bathroom beyond the two a house that size assumes adds $20. That is the whole formula, and it is why the number on the rate card tracks the house rather than a sales visit.
Booking on a schedule takes a percentage off every visit. If you have not decided how often, weekly, every two weeks, or monthly walks through picking one. Otherwise, put your bedroom and bathroom count into the quote form and the number appears on the page before anyone calls you.
Written by The owners of PH Cleaning Co. We publish our rates in full on the pricing page, and every figure in this article is generated from that same rate card when the page is built — so it cannot quietly go stale.
Read next
An Apartment Cleaning Checklist for Smaller Homes
Where the time actually goes in an occupied apartment or condo, the full room list, the extras worth adding, and how to sort out access before the visit.
Weekly, Every Two Weeks, or Monthly House Cleaning?
How to pick a cleaning cadence from how your household actually lives, what each one costs per visit and across a year, and what upkeep each schedule asks of you.
Get your number before you talk to anyone.
Tell us the bedrooms and bathrooms and the price appears on the page. No card, no call first, and nothing to cancel afterwards.