A practical first week for new residents of Friendswood and its neighbors: the trash schedule, the water supply, the flood policy waiting period and a clean house before the boxes come in.
Moving into a new home is the one time it is completely empty, and the one time cleaning it is easy. It is also a week full of new local details: which company takes the trash, when the carts go out, where the water comes from. This guide collects those details for Friendswood and the cities around it.
The order matters. Clean first, then unpack, then settle in.
The area is a patchwork of providers, so check the city your new address belongs to rather than the ZIP code.
In Friendswood, Waste Connections collects garbage two days a week and recycling and green waste one day a week. Carts must be at the curb by 7 a.m., and grass and leaves go out in clear bags of 35 pounds or less. In League City, AmeriWaste picks up trash twice a week across three zones, every household gets a 48-gallon recycling cart, and trash must be bagged inside the bin, with carts out by 7 a.m. In Webster, Republic Services collects residential trash on Mondays and Thursdays at no cost to residential customers. In Clear Lake, which is part of Houston, curbside tree waste goes out in odd-numbered months and junk waste such as furniture and appliances in even-numbered months.
Friendswood buys treated surface water from the City of Houston, drawn from Lake Livingston and the Trinity River, and adds groundwater from six city wells in the Gulf Coast Aquifer, each 600 feet or deeper. The city disinfects with chloramine, at an average residual of 2.88 milligrams per liter in 2025. A 2024 inventory of the system found no lead service lines.
League City buys its water from two suppliers: the Gulf Coast Water Authority, drawing from the Brazos River, and the City of Houston, drawing from the Trinity. It also uses chloramine and reports a total hardness of 124 milligrams per liter, which the U.S. Geological Survey puts in the hard range.
For a new home, that means two things. Hard water leaves scale and soap scum, so start the shower glass and faucets clean and wipe them often. And because chloramine is used, people who keep aquariums should ask a pet store about treating tap water before adding fish.
This step is not about cleaning, but it belongs in the first week. The City of Friendswood reminds residents that homeowner's policies do not cover flooding and that a flood policy typically takes up to 30 days to take effect. A new owner who waits until a storm is in the forecast may be too late.
The city also suggests a photo inventory of household items. A freshly cleaned, newly unpacked home is the easiest time to make one.
An empty home shows everything: dust on baseboards, film inside cabinets, crumbs in the oven and refrigerator from the last household. A Moving Clean handles all of it at once, from the deep clean list of baseboards, blinds, window tracks, fans, vents and shower glass to the inside of the oven, refrigerator and cabinets.
Book it for the day after the old owner or tenant moves out and before your own furniture arrives. If the home is a rental, photograph each room before and after the clean, since Texas law gives a landlord 30 days after move-out to return a deposit, and your move-in record will matter then. The move-out cleaning guide has the details.
Many homes in the area sit inside an association with its own rules. The Clear Lake City Community Association, founded in 1963, enforces deed restrictions and maintains parks, pools and esplanades for more than 6,000 properties, and League City's Tuscan Lakes is a master-planned community with a homeowners association. Ask for the rules on trash can storage, yard work and parking before move-in day.
Mosquito spraying is handled by the county in Friendswood, either Harris County or Galveston County Mosquito Control depending on which side of Clear Creek the home sits. Once you are in, the recurring cleaning guide helps choose a plan for the year.
The questions Friendswood homeowners ask most often about this topic, answered plainly.
TotalCare Cleaning will service Friendswood and surrounding areas with background-checked cleaners and is insured up to $1 million. Re-clean guarantee: if we missed something, tell us by the end of the next day and we come back to fix it. Beyond Clean. TotalCare.
