We clean homes across Riverdale

What older Riverdale homes ask of a cleaner

Riverdale sits on steep hills above the Hudson. The housing on those hills runs from big prewar apartment buildings to older detached houses on wooded lots. Much of it was built long before anyone thought about easy upkeep. Plaster walls, deep window sills and wood floors that have been refinished more than once all hold dust. They hold it in ways a newer apartment does not, and a quick wipe leaves most of it behind.

Radiators are the thing people forget. Steam heat runs all winter in the older buildings, and the fins and the wall behind them collect a grey film that bakes on once the heat comes up. Most people dust the cover and never touch the inside. In a deep clean we get behind and between the fins, then work along the baseboards and the tops of tall cabinets that nobody can reach from the floor.

Co-op apartments often come with building rules about when you can move in. A move in cleaning is easiest in the empty unit, before the boxes arrive. That is when the closets, the inside of the kitchen cabinets and the floor where the old fridge stood can all be reached. Once the furniture is in, those spots tend to stay dirty for years, and you end up living with the last owner's dust.

• Radiators cleaned inside and behind, not just the cover
• Baseboards and window sills wiped by hand
• Kitchen cabinets cleaned inside before you move in
• Tops of tall cabinets and door frames dusted
• Eco friendly cleaning products when you ask for them

Renovation dust in plaster buildings

Plenty of Riverdale houses and co-op units get a kitchen or a bathroom redone at some point. Work in a plaster building makes a fine white dust that travels. It gets into the next room even with plastic hung across the doorway. It sits on top of door frames, inside light fixtures and in the gaps between floorboards. Wipe it with a dry cloth and you only move it somewhere else.

Post renovation cleaning is a different job from a regular clean. We start high and work down, so dust knocked off a shelf does not land on a floor that is already done. Vent covers come off and get wiped. Windows get cleaned on the inside, including the tracks where grit from the work collects. Floors are done last, once the air has had time to settle.

Skip that step and the dust keeps coming back for weeks. It blows out of the vents every time the heat comes on, and it drifts out of closets nobody opened during the first clean. People often blame the contractor for leaving a mess when the real problem is dust that was never pulled out of the places it hides. A proper clean after the work is what gets the room back to normal.

We clean offices and shops in Riverdale

Most of the work we do across the Bronx is commercial cleaning, and Riverdale has a lot of it. There are medical offices on the ground floor of apartment buildings and small shops along Riverdale Avenue and Johnson Avenue. These spaces see steady foot traffic all day, and the floors, the bathrooms and the front counter show it long before anything else does.

Winter is the hard season for them. Riverdale's steep streets get salted heavily, and everyone who walks in carries that salt in on their boots. It dries into a white crust on tile and wears down the finish on wood floors if it sits. An entryway that looked fine in the fall can look tired by the end of winter unless the salt comes off regularly.

For an office or a shop, we walk through the space with you first and agree on what gets done on each visit. That way nothing depends on someone remembering. If your staff or patients are in the space all day and you would rather we use eco friendly products, tell us up front. We will plan the work around that from the first visit.

Getting a price in Riverdale

Call us at (516) 537-2367 or send your details through the form on this page. Tell us what the space is and what kind of cleaning you need, whether it is a deep clean, a move in or cleanup after a renovation. We look at the job and give you a free quote before any work starts, so you know what is included and what it costs.