House cleaning in Spring, TX

Spring is where the pine belt north of Houston fills up with subdivisions, and the houses here go up rather than out. Two stories is the usual shape, with a carpeted staircase turning at a landing, and where the entry opens two floors high there is a ceiling fan and a light fixture hanging well out of reach of anyone standing on the floor. The older streets around the original town center keep wood-framed houses with deep porches; the newer loops are brick and siding on wooded lots.

A staircase is the slowest stretch of floor in any of these houses. Carpet on treads holds everything that gets walked up it, the vertical face of each step catches marks that a vacuum never touches, and the rail and the spindles get handled every day and wiped almost never. The two story entry is the other one: the fan blades, the top of the fixture and the ledge above the door all need a pole or a ladder, which is why they get skipped for months at a time and then show. Upstairs bedrooms sit right under the roof, so they run warmer than the rest of the house, and their vents and returns are worth going over on the same visit.