Twenty minutes of your time saves an hour of ours, and the hour is on your bill.
None of this is required. All of it is why one house takes three hours and an identical one takes five.
Pick up everything off the floor
Toys, shoes, laundry baskets, the dog bowl, cables. We will not move personal things, and anything still on the carpet gets cleaned around, which is visible afterwards.
Vacuum, but only once and only briefly
We vacuum before we extract. A quick pass by you gets the surface litter that clogs our head. A deep pass by you is wasted work.
Point out the spots while they are still dry
Wet carpet hides a stain until it comes back three days later. Walk the rooms with us at the start and mark them. Two minutes.
Empty the small furniture
Bookcases and side tables we can shift if they are light. Full ones we cannot, and we will not empty them for you.
Somewhere for the hose to come in
The van needs to be within about a hundred feet and one door has to stay open with a hose in it for the duration. In winter that door is the coldest part of the job for everybody.
Decide where the pets go
The machine is loud and the door is open. A cat in a bedroom with the door shut is the plan that works.
Please do not pre-treat with anything
Supermarket spot cleaners leave a detergent residue that sets in the fibre and attracts dirt straight back. It also means the spot comes back in a fortnight and it looks like our fault. If it has already happened, tell us and we will rinse that area twice.
Please do not scrub
Scrubbing distorts the pile permanently. A distorted patch stays visible after cleaning, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Blot, do not rub, is not a saying, it is the whole of it.
Please do not book us the day before a party
Read the drying hours on the front page. Twenty four hours before furniture goes back down is a real number, and a rug thrown over damp carpet the same evening will mark it.
After we go
Crack the windows, put the ceiling fans on, and leave the blocks under the furniture legs until tomorrow. If anything looks wrong once it is dry, ring us inside a week and we will come back out for it. That is not a guarantee written by a lawyer, it is just what we do.
Weekday mornings are the easiest to get.
Call 816 555 0155