Flat rate vs. by the minute
How a cleaning company charges shapes how your home gets cleaned. Here's why we chose to bill by the minute, and what that means for the work.
With a flat rate, the price is set before anyone walks in the door. From that moment, every minute the crew saves is profit, and every extra minute spent on a detail costs the company money. The faster the crew leaves, the sooner they reach the next house.
That pressure doesn't show up in the parts of a home you notice first. It shows up in the parts that take time: the corners, the edges, underneath things, and inside things. A rushed clean often looks fine from the doorway.
This isn't a knock on the people doing the work. It's the incentive the pricing model creates.
Common shortcuts when the clock works against the cleaner, and what our standard checklist covers on every visit instead.
Bathrooms
The rushed clean
Our standard, every visit
✓ Toilet inside and out, plus the items beside it. Shower walls up to six feet, the glass, and the pan. The tub and surrounding tile. Shower head, tap, and handles. Vanity, mirror, cabinet fronts spot-cleaned, baseboards, and the floor.
Kitchen
The rushed clean
Our standard, every visit
✓ Countertops, sink, tap, and handles, with small appliances and countertop items moved so we clean under and behind them, not around them. The microwave inside and out. The outside of the fridge, oven, and dishwasher. Cabinet fronts spot-cleaned. The outside of the toaster oven, coffee maker, and trash can where you have them. The floor.
Dusting
The rushed clean
Our standard, every visit
✓ We lift and move the items we can safely move, then dust under and behind them before putting them back. Window sills dusted too.
Floors
The rushed clean
Our standard, every visit
✓ Carpets vacuumed. Hard floors vacuumed and mopped. A crevice tool along the walls and around furniture as needed.
Dining room
The rushed clean
Our standard, every visit
✓ The table, plus the seats and backs of the chairs. Then the chairs come out and we clean underneath the table.
Laundry, pets & the rest of the home
The rushed clean
Our standard, every visit
✓ Washer and dryer exteriors, shelves dusted, and a crevice tool along the baseboards and down the sides of the machines. Under and around pet feeding areas. Window sills dusted, mirrors cleaned, and every small trash can emptied and relined.
We remove every sign that someone lives there.
Fingerprints on the fridge and cabinet pulls. Toothpaste on the mirror. Water spots on the tap. Crumbs under the toaster and the dining table. Soap scum on the shower glass. Footprints on the floor. When we leave, your home should look like no one has used it since we arrived.
That's why we move things instead of cleaning around them. In the kitchen and while dusting, we lift and move the items we can safely move and clean under and behind them, because that's where the evidence hides.
Your Cleaning Pro clocks in on arrival and clocks out when the job is done. You pay for the minutes in between, at our hourly rate, and you can see those minutes on your receipt.
That removes the reason to rush. Moving the chairs, running the crevice tool along the walls, scrubbing the shower pan: each of those takes minutes, and those minutes are billed honestly instead of skipped.
It also works the other way. A tidy home takes less time and costs less. You never pay for a flat price built around someone else's messier house.
Billing by the minute doesn't mean we take our time. Every minute on the clock is your money, so our Cleaning Pros always clean as quickly as possible.
The difference is what "quick" means. A rushed clean is fast because it skips things. Our Pros are fast because they're good at the work: they move through the full checklist in an efficient order and keep working steadily until the job is done.
Quick on every item. Never by skipping one.
A flat rate tells you the price before the clean, and that's a real advantage. We give you that too: our instant estimate shows an expected range for your home before you book.
The final bill is based on the minutes on the clock, with a 2-hour minimum per visit. No rounding up to the next hour, and no add-on fees for the items on your checklist.
Our full checklist is published for anyone to read. Get an instant estimate for your home in under a minute.