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.
Moving into a Portland home comes with a few local systems that work differently from most cities. Garbage service is assigned by address, compost is collected at the curb with rules about what goes in, and the water at your tap may come from Bull Run, from wells, or from a neighboring city's river supply, depending on where you live.
This guide covers the setup to do before you unpack, how to deal with the boxes and leftovers from the move, and the cleaning that is easiest while the home is still empty.
Every Portland home has an assigned garbage and recycling company, and the City sets the rates and service options. You do not shop for a hauler; you find out which company covers your address and set up service with it. Renters should ask the landlord how service is set up for the building.
Residential curbside compost takes food scraps and yard waste, plus food-soiled paper and pizza boxes. That makes the compost cart useful on move-in day: the takeout boxes, paper plates and greasy paper towels from unpacking can go in it rather than in the garbage.
Moves create more waste than a weekly cart can hold. Portland has two routes for the overflow:
Most Portland addresses get Portland Water Bureau water, drawn from the Bull Run Watershed and from groundwater at the Columbia South Shore Well Field. Bull Run water is soft, at about 7 to 11 parts per million of hardness, so you are unlikely to need a softener for hardness alone. The bureau adds sodium carbonate and carbon dioxide to reduce corrosion, keeping the pH typically between 8.0 and 9.0.
Some addresses near the city's service boundary get water from other providers, such as the City of Lake Oswego or the Tualatin Valley Water District. If you are in one of the suburbs, your city's own utility runs the show. Check your first water bill to confirm the provider, and read that utility's water quality report.
An empty home is the easiest it will ever be to clean. The places that get hidden by furniture and food, and the ones a previous occupant may have skipped, are all reachable at once:
When TotalCare Cleaning comes to Portland, the Moving Clean will be the visit built for an empty home, whether you are moving in or moving out. The Moving Clean includes the full deep clean list, with baseboards washed by hand, blinds wet-wiped, fixtures and vents wiped in place, plus the inside of the oven, refrigerator and cabinets. Book it for the day between getting the keys and the moving truck arriving if you can.
About 48 percent of occupied Portland homes are rented, so many new residents are moving into a rental. Take dated photos of each room on move-in day, before and after cleaning, and keep them with your lease. Oregon gives a landlord 31 days after you move out to return a deposit or explain deductions, and good records from day one make that conversation simpler. The move-out guide covers the rule.
The questions Portland homeowners ask most often about this topic, answered plainly.
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.
