House and office cleaner in Clovis, NMRachell’s Cleaning Services

The New Mexico side runs on Mountain time. The Texas side runs on Central, an hour ahead, and that's Farwell, Bovina, Friona and Muleshoe. Same stretch of road. Different clock.

Nine in Friona is eight in Clovis. So if one of us is reading the other one's clock, somebody ends up standing at the front window for an hour, watching the road.

When you text me a time, just put your town next to it. “Nine, Farwell time,” and nobody has to guess.

My days run 8 to 5, Monday through Friday, and 8 to 2 on Saturday, all on Clovis time. On the Texas side that's 9 to 6 during the week and 9 to 3 on Saturday.

Nothing I cover is more than about an hour out. Portales is down 70. Texico and Farwell are straight out 60, and past Farwell the road splits, 60 up to Bovina and Friona and 84 down to Muleshoe.

Save the big cleaning for after the wind

Out here the wind has a season. It starts in late winter and doesn't really quit until May, and on a bad afternoon you can watch the sky go brown before it gets to town.

Every house takes some of it in, however tight the windows are, and it settles up high first. Fan blades, blinds, the top of anything tall.

With four kids of my own, believe me, the wind isn't the only thing that brings the yard inside.

Here's the part I wish more people knew. A deep cleaning is really two jobs in one. Half of it the wind can't touch: the inside of the oven, the fridge, the grout, that white line the water leaves on the shower glass. The other half is up high, the fans and the vents and the light fixtures, and in March the wind can undo that half in a week.

So if you only do one big cleaning a year, do it at the end of May or in June, once the wind lays down. During the windy months, a cleaning every week or every other week keeps the dust from piling up in the meantime.

May in Portales, summer at Cannon

Moves around here come in bunches. The apartments near the university in Portales empty out when the semester ends, twice a year, in May and in December. And a lot of the military families at Cannon move in the summer.

Those are the weeks when everybody wants the same two days. If your move-out lands in one of them, don't wait on it, because the last few days before the trucks roll are the first ones gone.

With the rooms empty, a move-out opens everything. Every cabinet and drawer, the oven, the fridge, the closets, the baseboards the couch was hiding, the switch plates nobody has wiped since move-in day.

The oven and the refrigerator are the first two things a landlord opens, so those are the two I start with.

Book it for after the last box leaves, since an empty house goes faster and nothing gets missed behind a dresser. Keep the water and the lights on until I'm done. I need both. And tell me when the walk-through is, so I can work the day backwards from it.

Moving in is the same job going the other direction. Have it cleaned before the boxes come through the door, and the cabinets you're about to fill are clean on the inside.

An office, three days a week

I clean offices too, Monday through Friday between 8 and 5.

An office does better on a steady schedule than with one big cleaning when things start to look bad. The trash, the break room, the restroom and the floors need it more often than people figure, and in the windy months so does the glass on the front door.

If you book me three days a week or more, you get 10% off. Monday, Wednesday and Friday spreads it out nicely, and the Monday visit takes care of whatever the weekend blew in.

And if a client is coming in to sign papers, tell me the day. That's the morning the conference room and the restroom get looked at first.