Portland area · Oregon · Professional Home Cleaning
House cleaning planned for Portland homes: soft Bull Run water, about 157 wet days a year, a large share of prewar houses and a short, dry summer.
Answered 24/7, day or night
Recurring weekly or biweekly cleaning to the same TotalCare Cleaning standard every visit, with Hotel Finish detail.
From $160 / visit
One-time or seasonal deep cleaning. Baseboards hand washed, cabinet fronts degreased, ceiling fans, blinds and vents. Every detail surface your standard clean misses.
From $311
Inspection-ready move-out cleaning for tenants, landlords, sellers, and buyers. Interior appliances, all cabinets, baseboards, inspection-ready standard.
From $391
Service Areas
Every TotalCare Cleaning professional is background-checked and screened before their first job.
Portland area · Oregon
Beaverton is split close to evenly between owners and renters, with many apartments, houses from the late 1980s and water that starts in the Tualatin River.
King City grew from farmland bought in 1960 into a mostly owner occupied city, age restricted until the 1980s, with homes from about 1976 and a new area planned.
Lake Oswego has soft Clackamas River water, a lake reached through deeded privileges, and mostly detached houses with a median build year of 1982.
Sherwood began as a brickyard town called Smockville. Today most homes are detached, many date from after 2000, and the water comes from the Willamette.
Tigard is a younger suburb, with a median home from 1988, a good share of renters and water from a supply it shares with Lake Oswego.
Tualatin is one of the newer suburbs on this side of Portland, with a median home from 1992, Portland water and a large share of renters.
Other places in the Portland area: Bridlemile, Browns Ferry Park, Bull Mountain, Cedar Hills, Cooper Mountain, Dunthorpe, First Addition, Lake Oswego area, Metzger, Mountain Park, Murrayhill, Tualatin Commons, Uplands.
Local Guides
What a One-Time Deep Clean covers in Portland and why it suits the city's older houses, its long rainy season and the fine dust that settles after a dry, smoky summer.
A practical checklist for vetting any Portland cleaning company or independent cleaner: Oregon's public business records, the state consumer office, and what to ask about keys, payment and products.
The Moving Clean for Portland rentals and home sales, planned around ORS 90.300, the state's security deposit statute, and the city's own rules for clearing out trash and bulky items.
How to choose a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly Recurring House Clean for a Portland home, matched to about 157 rainy days, the fall leaf drop and a short dry summer.
A month by month Portland cleaning calendar built from the airport's 1991 to 2020 climate normals: when mud peaks, when leaves fall, when dust and smoke take over.
Portland's Bull Run water is soft and its groundwater is moderately hard. Here is what each means for glass, tile and fixtures, and which supply reaches Beaverton, Lake Oswego, Tigard, Tualatin and Sherwood.
What to clean and set up in your first week in a Portland home: your assigned garbage hauler, the compost cart, bulky pickup, Metro drop-off sites and which water utility reaches your address.
About 27 percent of Portland homes date from 1939 or earlier and 63 percent from before 1980. Here is how to clean old fir floors, plaster, original tile and painted trim without wearing them down.
Portland winters are more wet than white. Here is how to keep mud, leaf litter and damp grit out of the house through the city's three wettest months and the occasional freeze.
Portland homes get dirty in their own way. The tap water is soft, about half a grain of hardness per gallon, so the chalky crust that frustrates people in hard water regions rarely shows up on a faucet here. What does show up is mud, wet leaf litter and damp entryways for much of the year, followed by a few weeks of warm, dry, dusty weather in July and August.
This page explains what that pattern means for the houses, apartments and suburbs around the city, what TotalCare Cleaning will charge by home size when it comes to Portland, and where to find the local guides on deep cleaning, moving, the rainy season, older homes and the water.
Census estimates put about 27 percent of Portland homes in buildings from 1939 or earlier, and the median home dates from 1966. Roughly 63 percent of all housing units went up before 1980. Homes of that age tend to have plaster walls, original wood floors, painted built-ins and small tiled bathrooms whose grout has been scrubbed for decades, and every one of those surfaces wants a gentler hand than a new laminate countertop.
About 52 percent of the city's units are single family detached houses, while about 16 percent sit in large buildings of 50 or more units. Newer construction is a real share too: about 13 percent of homes were built in 2010 or later. A downtown one bedroom and a 1920s four square on a leafy side street need very different plans, which is why the older home cleaning guide and the cost page treat them separately.
Portland International Airport records a normal of 36.92 inches of precipitation a year, and measurable rain falls on about 157 days. The wettest stretch is November through January, at 5.45, 5.77 and 5.03 inches. That is the season of wet shoes by the door, damp dog towels, muddy mats and grit ground into the finish of hardwood near the back entry.
Summer flips the pattern. July and August bring only about half an inch of rain each, normal highs sit near 82 degrees, and around 15 days a year reach 90 or above. Windows stay up and dust settles on sills and shelves. In a smoky week the Oregon Health Authority advises keeping windows and doors shut, running a HEPA filter and holding off on vacuuming so the particles already inside are not stirred back up. Winter cold is mild by comparison: freezes come on about 32 nights a year and normal snowfall is 4.2 inches.
The seasonal cleaning calendar and the rainy season and winter guide turn those numbers into a practical plan.
The Portland Water Bureau describes Bull Run water as soft, with a typical hardness of 7 to 11 parts per million. Groundwater from the Columbia South Shore Well Field is harder, at around 80 parts per million, though still moderate. Either way, the cloudy film on a Portland shower door is mostly soap and body oil rather than minerals, so it comes off with the right cleaner and a soft pad instead of acid and scraping.
Some addresses near the city's edges get water from other providers, including the City of Lake Oswego and the Tualatin Valley Water District. The Portland water guide explains which supply does what.
When TotalCare Cleaning comes to Portland, it will offer three kinds of visits, each priced flat by bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage. A One-Time Deep Clean ($311.00 to $690.00) resets a house that has gone a while without detailed care: baseboards washed by hand, blinds wet-wiped, window tracks cleared, fans, light fixtures and vents wiped in place and cabinet fronts degreased. A Recurring House Clean on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly plan keeps it there, with bi-weekly visits from $160.00. A Moving Clean ($391.00 to $817.00) handles an empty home and adds the inside of the oven, refrigerator and cabinets.
About 48 percent of occupied Portland homes are rented, so the Moving Clean will matter here. Oregon gives a landlord 31 days after a tenancy ends to return a deposit or explain deductions in writing, and the move-out cleaning guide walks through the rule. New arrivals can start with the move-in guide.
The Portland area that TotalCare Cleaning will service reaches into the suburbs to the south and west. Each has its own water supply and housing age, which changes the work more than the price:
Bridlemile, Dunthorpe, Cedar Hills, Cooper Mountain, Murrayhill, Bull Mountain, Metzger, First Addition, Uplands, Mountain Park, Browns Ferry Park and Tualatin Commons will all be covered on the same Portland area price table. Portland itself runs its neighborhood program through four nonprofit district coalition offices, a good reminder that a city this size is really dozens of small places, each with its own mix of old and new homes.
Frequently Asked Questions
TotalCare Cleaning will service Portland 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.
