A first-week guide for new Plano residents: the city trash carts and bulky pickup, where the tap water comes from, setting appliances for its hardness, and cleaning an empty home before the boxes come in.
Plano has been absorbing newcomers for decades. Its population passed 72,000 by 1980, and the Handbook of Texas notes that more than half of the residents then came from outside the state. Since 1990, Frisco and McKinney have grown even faster.
If you are one of the new arrivals, this guide covers the practical local details that affect cleaning and setup in your first weeks: city waste service, the water supply and what to clean before you unpack.
The City of Plano collects household trash in 68-gallon and 95-gallon carts. Bulky waste collection is for items too large to fit in those carts, such as old furniture or the mattress the previous owner left in the garage.
Moving creates a lot of bulky waste at once, and it rarely lines up with your neighborhood's normal collection day. Plano offers a paid special collection for bulky items set out outside your normal collection day and for any large amount of construction debris from a major household renovation. If you are remodeling before you move in, plan for that service.
Moving boxes are the other big item. Break them down flat as you unpack so they fit the carts, rather than piling them in the garage for weeks.
Plano is a member city of the North Texas Municipal Water District, which supplies more than 2.4 million people across 2,200 square miles, including Allen, Frisco, McKinney and Richardson. The district describes its treated water as moderately hard, mainly because of minerals in Lavon Lake, and says those minerals can leave spots on dishes and lime scale on fixtures.
Two setup steps help right away. First, set your dishwasher's water hardness option: the district advises dividing hardness in milligrams per liter by 17.12 to get grains per gallon, and recent readings from its Wylie plant work out to about 7. Second, if the home has a water softener, check that it is working and set to the same figure. The hard water guide has the details.
Each spring, for about 28 days, the district temporarily changes one step in its treatment process as routine system maintenance. The district explains the change on its news site, so check there if you have questions about your water in that period.
An empty house is the easiest one you will ever clean. Once the furniture and boxes arrive, the inside of cabinets, the back of closets and the floor under the refrigerator become hard to reach for years. Clean in this order, top to bottom:
Roughly 43 percent of Plano's occupied homes are rented. If you are renting, walk the home before you move in and photograph every room, including inside appliances and cabinets. Note anything already dirty or damaged on the landlord's move-in form.
Texas law bars a landlord from keeping deposit money for normal wear and tear, and Section 92.103 of the Texas Property Code requires a refund within 30 days after you surrender the home. Day-one photos make the difference between existing wear and anything that happened during your lease much easier to show when you eventually move out.
The Moving Clean is built for exactly this situation: an empty home before the boxes arrive. The Moving Clean covers the full deep clean list, including baseboards, blinds, fans, vents, window tracks, cabinet fronts, shower glass and faucets, plus inside the oven, refrigerator and cabinets. Book it for the day after the previous occupant leaves, or the day before your movers come.
Leave water and power on for the visit, and if the previous owner left bulky items behind, arrange the city's collection first. Cleaners will not move or haul furniture.
The questions Plano homeowners ask most often about this topic, answered plainly.
TotalCare Cleaning will service Plano 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.
