Vacation Home Cleaning in Palm Beach: The Clean Before You Close Up
Serving Palm Beach and the surrounding area · open 24 hours
Vacation home cleaning in Palm Beach is mostly about one visit: the departure clean you book right before you fly north. A closed Florida house sits in heat and humidity for six months. What you leave behind in May is what greets you in November.
Most of our vacation home cleaning in Palm Beach happens in a two-week window in April and early May, when half the island is packing. The work is not glamorous. It is emptying, wiping, vacuuming and drying every surface that could hold a spore, so the house has nothing to feed on while you are gone. We are a cleaning company, so that is the part we handle. The thermostat, the water meter and the humidity are yours, though the University of Florida has thought about them harder than most of us, and we will pass that along.
The departure clean: what we do before you close up for summer
A departure clean is a deep clean with a different goal. A normal deep clean makes a house nice to live in. This one makes a house boring to mould. We work wet to dry: kitchen and appliances first, then bathrooms, then floors, then the soft things that hold dust. Fabric matters more than people expect. Settled dust on a sofa arm is food, and a closed house in July is a very good restaurant.
We also clean the things that only matter because you are leaving. Crumbs under the toaster are a non-event in February and a pantry moth in August. Same with the tray under the fridge, the shower door track, the washer gasket, and whatever is behind the bed. Tell us the house is closing for the season and we change the order of the work.
- Fridge and freezer emptied, wiped out and left dry
- Pantry cleared of anything a pest would call dinner
- Upholstery and mattresses vacuumed, crevices included
- Bathrooms scrubbed and dried, door tracks and grout included
- Hard floors washed, rugs vacuumed both sides where we can
- Bins emptied, washed and left open
- Washer gaskets and dryer lint traps cleared out
What six months of Florida summer does to an empty house
Nothing dramatic happens in an empty Palm Beach house. That is the problem. It happens slowly, in the dark, at eighty-something percent outdoor humidity. Federal guidance on mould and moisture puts the indoor target below 60% relative humidity, ideally between 30 and 50%. Above that, spores already sitting in the carpet and the curtains stop being dormant and start being a colony. Nobody has to leave a window open. The air does it.
So the November version is familiar to anyone who owns a second home here. A smell in the hallway that was not there in May. A grey bloom on a leather chair. A washing machine gone sour. Salt air adds its own film near a sliding door. None of it means the house was dirty. It means it was warm, damp and closed, which is the only combination mould needs.
Back to topUF/IFAS advice for closing up a Florida home for summer
This next part is not our work, and we want to be plain about that. It is homeowner advice from UF/IFAS Extension, the University of Florida's agricultural and consumer sciences arm, and the best short guide to closing a Florida home we have found. We repeat it because customers ask, not because we are offering to do it. The thermostat, the plumbing and the water meter are jobs for you, your handyman, or a licensed home-watch service.
Two items on that list overlap with our end of things. The fungicidal clean two weeks out and the upholstery vacuum a week out are cleaning tasks, and if you book us in that window we can work to that timing. Tell us at booking that the house is closing, and which products you want used. What we cannot do is set your thermostat in July, watch the humidity, or remediate mould that is already growing.
- Set the air conditioner no higher than 85F so it still cycles and pulls moisture out
- Keep indoor relative humidity under 55 to 60%, the range where mould and bacteria get going
- Clean with a fungicidal product about two weeks before you leave, to knock down existing spores
- Vacuum upholstered furniture about a week out, crevice areas included
- Empty the refrigerator, wipe it with one tablespoon of baking soda to a quart of water, clean the defrost pan, and leave the doors slightly ajar
- Put stoppers in the drains and seal the toilets so sewer gas and pests stay out
- Turn the water off at the meter unless the irrigation still needs it
- Unplug appliances so a storm surge does not take them out, and keep AC condensate lines clear
Booking your second home cleaning in Palm Beach around your flight
April is our busiest fortnight of the year, so book the departure clean earlier than feels necessary. Six to eight weeks ahead is comfortable. We are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which matters more on this page than on most we write. People want the house done the evening before a 6 a.m. flight, or the morning after the movers take the patio furniture into storage. Send gate codes and HOA access windows up front.
If somebody is coming through mid-summer, a contractor or a family member, you can book a one-off clean while you are away. Ask and we will schedule it. It is a cleaning visit and nothing more: we do not inspect the house, monitor it, or report on its condition, and we are not a substitute for home watch. For the other end of the season, we have a separate page on the open-up clean.
Back to topWhat a summer home cleaning in Palm Beach costs
We quote flat prices from real square footage, before anyone shows up at the door. See the numbers yourself on our Palm Beach pricing page, or run the instant calculator on our homepage. That is not standard in this business. Most cleaning companies here publish no pricing at all and ask you to call for a figure they will not put in writing. A departure clean is quoted as a deep clean, because that is what it is.
There are recurring discounts if you use us through the season, 20% off weekly, 15% bi-weekly and 10% monthly, though for most second-home owners this is a single visit. Every cleaner is background-checked, reference-checked, interviewed in person, insured and trained. If something is not right, tell us within 24 hours and we re-clean it free. Our Google rating is 5.0 from 6 reviews, a small number reported honestly.
Back to topFrequently asked questions
Six to eight weeks ahead if you can, because April and early May are the busiest weeks of our year. If you want the clean to line up with the UF/IFAS timing, the fungicidal clean sits about two weeks before departure and the upholstery vacuum about a week out. Tell us your flight date and we work backwards.
UF/IFAS Extension advises setting it no higher than 85F rather than switching it off, so the system still cycles and pulls moisture out of the air. The aim is keeping indoor relative humidity under 55 to 60%. That is homeowner advice, not something we set up or manage. We clean the house; the HVAC is yours or your contractor's.
No. We are a cleaning company, not a home-watch service or a property manager. We do not do welfare checks, walk-throughs, condition reports or storm inspections. We can clean before you leave, clean before you return, or come once mid-season if you book it. For anything else, you want a licensed home-watch firm.
UF/IFAS advises emptying it, wiping the interior with about one tablespoon of baking soda to a quart of water, removing and cleaning the defrost pan, and leaving the doors slightly ajar so it does not go sour. We will empty and clean it as part of the departure clean if you ask. The ajar doors are your last step on the way out.
Not as remediation, no. We clean surfaces, and a fungicidal clean before you close up helps knock down spores that are already present. But if mould is established in drywall, ductwork or under flooring, that is a licensed remediation job with a different scope entirely. We will tell you if we see something we think is beyond a cleaning.
No. Most departure cleans happen with nobody there, or with the owner packing around us. We just need reliable access: a code, a key, a lockbox, or a name left with the gate or the building. Send us the HOA or service-elevator hours too, because those are the ones that catch people out on moving day.
Close the house, lock it, get on the plane. Nobody wants to be scrubbing a defrost pan at eleven at night before an early flight. Call us on (561) 556-5899 or book online, tell us the date you fly, and we will work backwards from there. The house will still be standing in November. So will we.