Nobody talks about August. Spring cleaning gets all the attention, everyone has an opinion about it, and then the house sits through eight weeks of open windows and wet swimsuits and nobody says a word.
Ask anyone who runs a route in the west end. The August calls are different from the April calls. Same houses, worse floors.
What summer actually leaves behind
Open windows are the main one. Every window on a Toronto street facing anything busier than a laneway pulls in a fine grey film that settles on sills, screens and the top of the fridge. You don’t see it accumulating. You see it in September when the light changes angle and suddenly the windowsills look terrible.
Then there’s everything else that comes through the door between June and Labour Day:
Sand, if anyone went to Woodbine or up to Wasaga.
Cottage laundry, which arrives in bags and sits in the hallway for four days.
Barbecue grease, tracked in from the deck on bare feet, which does something specific and awful to hardwood finish.
Sunscreen on light coloured upholstery. That one’s permanent if it waits too long.
Air conditioning is doing something to your dust
Here’s the part most people miss. Running the AC for ten weeks straight moves an enormous amount of air through the same rooms, and every pass drops dust onto flat surfaces and pulls more of it into vents and return grilles. Houses feel dustier in late summer than in winter, and that’s why.
Wipe the return grille covers. Check the top of door frames. Both are places people skip year round and both are noticeably worse in August.
Where to actually start
If the whole thing feels like too much, and it usually does around this time of year, PureMaids cleaning services can take care of the seasonal reset before the busy fall season begins. Pick the three areas that carry the most summer damage and leave the rest for now:
Entryway and the first two metres of hallway floor. This is where the sand and grease live. Windows, sills and screens, especially anything that has been open since May. Whatever soft surfaces sat in direct sun all summer. Curtains, cushions, the couch arm nearest the window.
That’s a solid afternoon of work if you’re doing it yourself, or a single deep visit if you’re not. Worth booking before the second week of September, because that’s when every cleaning company Toronto families use gets slammed with back to school bookings and the calendar tightens up fast.
One more thing while you’re at it. Pull the patio furniture cushions in before the first real rain, not after. Everyone forgets, everyone regrets it, and mildew on outdoor fabric is much harder to fix than it looks.
If you’d rather hand the whole reset off, PureMaids cleaning services can take the seasonal visit and leave you the patio furniture.
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