SOPHIA SHINE CLEANING SERVICES

It arrives in every version. Sorry, it is really bad right now. Sorry, I let it go all summer. Sorry, I know this is a lot. We have gotten that same opening from a condo downtown and from a four bedroom in Round Rock, and it means the same thing both times. The person is embarrassed, and being embarrassed is the reason they waited so long to write.

So here is the part that seems to help. You do not have to know what to call it. People get stuck deciding whether they want a general clean or a deep clean, and while they are deciding they never write at all. Just tell us what bothers you when you walk in. The tub. The baseboards. The kitchen. Whatever it is, we will tell you which one of those two it is and what the difference means for your house. And if it comes out easier in Spanish, say it in Spanish.

The other thing worth knowing is that we are not only in finished, lived in homes. We clean apartments, offices, and houses right after the builders or the remodel crew have packed up, when there is drywall dust sitting on top of everything and nobody wants to touch it. Whatever you are about to describe, we have been in a room worse than that this month.

You can also ask everything before you agree to anything. What we would bring, how long a first visit runs, whether we even reach you. We go about an hour and a half out, which is Georgetown, Leander and Cedar Park to the north, Round Rock, Pflugerville and Manor, then North University, Barton Creek and downtown closer in, and Kyle to the south. If you are anywhere in that stretch, the drive is our problem, not yours.

The first clean is not like the ones after

A first visit does not start with a mop. It starts with the two of us walking your rooms while you point.

Before that, we ask exactly where you are. Cross streets, not just the city name. Round Rock is a big place and so is Georgetown, and I-35 is the difference between arriving when we said and arriving long after. We would rather give you a real window than a hopeful one.

Then the walkthrough. You show us the rooms and say what matters to you, and we say back what we see and roughly how long each part is going to take. This is also where we tell you out loud if what you are describing is a deep clean rather than a regular one. Nobody should discover that at the end.

The order of work barely changes. Top down, dry before wet. Ceiling fans come early, because in Texas they run most of the year and the blades hold more than people think, and because anything we knock loose up there is going to land on a floor we have not done yet. Dusting next, wet work after. Kitchens and bathrooms take the longest, in every house, every time.

You do not need to clean before we get there. The one thing that genuinely helps is putting away what is personal. Mail, papers, medicine, the kids' things. Then we can clean the surface instead of moving your life around on top of it.

Some people stay home and work through it. Some people go out and come back to a finished house. Both are completely normal and neither one changes what we do.

At the end we walk it again together, the same way we started. If something is not right, it gets redone at no extra cost, and if we are still standing there it gets redone right then. After that you pay whichever way is easiest for you: card, Zelle, Venmo, Cash App, cash or a check. That part should never be the complicated part.

One honest warning. The first clean takes longer than the ones after it. We are learning your house, which window opens, where the light switch hides, what you actually care about. Every visit after that is faster because of it.

Four kinds of cleaner ride in the car

Austin hands you two seasons a year that end up inside the house whether you invite them in or not.

Cedar comes first. The Ashe junipers west of I-35 start letting go in late November, and by January the count is at its worst. Right about when that finishes, the live oaks go in late March and early April and put that yellow green powder on the cars, the porch rail and every window sill. Then comes the run of hundred degree days from July into August, when nothing gets opened, the AC never really stops, and during the dry stretches the fine limestone dust out there finds its way in anyway.

We cannot do anything about the count outside. What we can do is not let it settle in. Window sills, the top edge of the blinds, fan blades, the return vent cover. That is where the film builds and that is exactly what gets skipped. We take it off with a damp cloth instead of a dry one, because dry dusting mostly just relaunches it to land somewhere else in the room.

Now the question people really want to ask, which is what goes on the floor. We keep four kinds with us, eco friendly, biodegradable, hypoallergenic and the regular conventional ones, and you are the one who picks, not us. If there is a baby crawling on that floor, or a dog that sleeps on the rug, or somebody in the house who reacts to strong smells, say so and we bring the hypoallergenic ones and leave the scented products in the car. If you want the strong conventional cleaner in the bathrooms and something gentler everywhere else, that is a normal request and we do it that way.

Tell us when you message, though, not when we are already at your door. What rides in the car gets decided the night before.

And one thing that has nothing to do with us at all. Change your AC filter in January and again in April. In Austin that unit runs almost the whole year, and between our visits that filter is catching most of what is floating around your rooms.

What people ask us