We clean every room between guest stays

We clean each rental in one order

We start high in each room and finish on the floor. We strip the beds first so the used sheets and towels are out of the way. Then we dust from the ceiling fans and air vents down to the furniture. Dust falls, so anything wiped before the fan has to be wiped again. The kitchen and bathrooms come next. The floors come last, and we back out of each room so nobody walks on a floor that was just mopped.

The kitchen is where a guest decides whether the place is clean. We open the fridge and throw out whatever the last guest left, then wipe the shelves and drawers. The microwave gets cleaned inside, and the cabinet fronts get wiped where hands grab them. In the bathroom we scrub the shower and then dry it, because Florida water is hard and dries into white spots on glass and chrome. To someone who just walked in with a suitcase, spotted glass looks dirty.

Before we leave, we walk every room again as if we were checking in ourselves. This is the step that gets skipped most, and it is the one guests notice. We look for a hair on a pillowcase, a smudge on a mirror, a ring on a nightstand, a toilet seat left up. Any one of those can end up in a review. The walk takes a few minutes, and it catches what a guest would take a picture of.

• Beds stripped and remade for the next guest
• Kitchen wiped, inside the fridge and microwave
• Shower grout scrubbed and glass dried
• Floors vacuumed first, then mopped
• Every room walked again before we leave

Florida humidity gets into an empty rental

A rental that sits empty for a few days in Plant City does not stay fresh on its own. Many owners turn the thermostat up between guests to save on power. Once the air conditioning stops pulling water out of the air, the humidity inside climbs fast. The first sign is a musty smell in the closets. After that the bedding feels damp, and black dots show up in the grout along the bottom of the tub.

Summer brings its own mess. Rain comes through most afternoons, and guests track wet sand and grass across the floor from the driveway or the pool deck. The sandy soil around here gets into grout lines and the tracks of the sliding glass door. A quick mop over that just pushes wet grit around and leaves a gray haze on the tile. We vacuum the floors dry first and clean out the door tracks, and only then do we mop.

That is why the bathroom in a Florida rental gets more time than it would up north. We scrub the grout and the caulk line where mildew starts, including the corners of the shower floor and the base of the toilet. Then we leave the bathroom door open so the room can air out before the next guest. If mildew has already grown into the caulk itself, scrubbing will not turn it white again. We point that out so you can have the caulk replaced.

Houses around Plant City are built differently

A lot of the houses around Plant City are older concrete block ranch homes with stucco outside and tile floors inside. Tile sweeps easily but is hard to get truly clean, because the grout sits lower and holds dirt and old mop water. On these houses we brush the grout in the kitchen and bathrooms instead of only mopping over it. Many of them also have textured ceilings, and cobwebs hang in the corners where a quick duster slides right past. We check each ceiling corner with a long duster.

Manufactured homes, and there are plenty in the parks around Plant City and Thonotosassa, need gentler cleaning. The tubs and shower walls are usually fiberglass or acrylic, so we use a soft cloth and a non-scratch cleaner. Scouring powder leaves fine scratches that hold dirt and look dull for good. The floors are often vinyl over a wood subfloor, so the mop goes on damp rather than wet. Water that sits in the seams can seep underneath and swell the subfloor.

The newer two-story houses and townhomes in Brandon and Valrico come with different problems. They usually have tile or vinyl plank downstairs and carpet on the stairs and in the bedrooms. Vinyl plank streaks if it is mopped with too much cleaner, and streaks look dirty in the afternoon sun. The stairs take more foot traffic than anywhere else in the house. We vacuum each step with a hand tool, because an upright vacuum skips the edges where dirt collects.

Guests notice what they touch first

Most guests never look on top of the fridge. What they notice is what sits at eye level or under their hands. That means light switches, door handles, the TV remote, faucet handles and the kitchen drawer pulls. A sticky remote tells a guest more about a rental than a clean floor does. We wipe every one of those surfaces on every clean, along with the inside of the dishwasher door and the handle on the fridge.

The other trouble spot is anywhere the last guest could have dropped something. We look under every bed and between the couch cushions, and we check the dresser drawers and closet shelves. Anything left behind gets set aside for you. Then we pull the hair out of the shower and sink drains before it builds into a clog. An earring under the bed is a small thing for you to find. For the next guest, it is a reason to wonder what else got missed.

Diane Ryan left us a Google review. It reads, "So appreciate the special touches and attention to detail." Casondra Neff wrote about a home we cleaned. She said, "My home feels like I just moved in." That is the standard we hold a rental to. The next guest should walk into a place that looks like nobody has stayed there yet.