House cleaning in Pasadena, TX

Pasadena sits east and southeast of downtown Houston, with the ship channel running along its northern edge, on ground flat enough that a street can go a mile without a rise in it. A lot of these blocks went up for refinery and plant families during the boom years, and they still look it: single story, brick across the front, a slab underneath, and a carport or a garage somebody closed in years ago. Warm, wet air off the Gulf runs over the city most of the year, and it only turns around in the coldest weeks of winter, when the fronts come down from the north.

That humidity is what changes the work here. It keeps fine outdoor dust damp on window glass and on anything metal, so it holds instead of blowing back off, and sills, blinds and screen tracks need more than a dusting. Older aluminum-framed windows run cold against that outside air in summer, so the glass and the frame sweat and the water finds the track, which is why the track gets emptied and dried rather than wiped over. One story means the whole house shares one run of ductwork and one set of vents, and the return grille is usually the dirtiest thing in it. A converted garage is still a slab floor at the outside wall, so the room next to it collects whatever works its way in along the bottom of it.