Why Does Art's Cleaning Services Use a 50-Point Checklist?

Because "we cleaned your house" is not a standard — a list of 50 named tasks is. Our checklist splits into 12 kitchen points, 12 bathroom points, 12 living-area points, 6 bedroom points, and 8 all-around-the-house points. That is 50 exactly, it is published in full, and the lead maid signs off against it before the crew leaves your home.

What is actually on the 50 points?

Each section is a fixed list of tasks, not a theme. The counts are not decoration — they are how a crew knows the room is finished and how you know what you paid for.

Notice how specific the wording is. "Ceiling fan blades top and bottom" exists because the top edge is the half that gets skipped.

Why publish the list at all?

Because an unpublished standard is not a standard — it is a promise. Cleaning is one of the few services where the customer usually is not watching the work happen, so the only real accountability is a list both sides agreed to in advance.

Publishing it also settles arguments before they start. If a task is on the 50, it is included at the quoted price; if it is not, we say so upfront rather than after the fact.

Why does the lead maid sign off instead of the office?

Because the only person who can verify a bathroom is the person standing in it. Our process runs in three steps — Clean, Checked, Ready — and the middle step is not a phone call from a manager.

Before the crew leaves, the work is reviewed against the approved scope, and the lead maid signs off rather than leaving quality to chance. That is also what makes our 100% satisfaction promise workable: if something on the 50 was missed, you get a free re-clean, and the checklist tells everyone exactly what "missed" means.

"I asked for a deep clean and they did amazing. They were insanely thorough getting behind appliances, etc." — Dr. Julie Wells, Google review, deep clean after construction

What counts as an add-on rather than one of the 50?

Three jobs come up constantly and none of them are part of the 50: inside the oven, inside the fridge, and interior windows. They are paid extras, quoted separately, and never silently folded into a standard price.

The distinction protects you as much as us. A company that quietly includes the oven "when there's time" is a company whose price will drift.

How does the checklist change what a visit actually looks like?

It fixes the order of work, which is the real reason the results repeat. A crew that improvises finishes differently every visit; a crew running a list finishes the same way every time.

Here is the sequence a visit follows:

1. Walk the scope. Confirm the rooms, any add-ons, and anything you flagged — pets, problem areas, products to use or avoid.
2. Work room by room in a fixed order, kitchens and bathrooms first, then bedrooms, living areas, and the all-around details.
3. Top-down within each room. Vents and fan blades before surfaces, surfaces before floors.
4. Reset the room, not just clean it — items replaced neatly, towels hung, cushions straightened.
5. The lead maid checks the work against the 50 and signs off.
6. Leave it ready — lights off, doors locked per your instructions.

Does every service use the same 50 points?

No, and that is deliberate. The 50-Point Checklist is our signature deep-clean scope. Standard and recurring cleaning runs a lighter maintenance list because it is maintaining a home rather than resetting one, and move-in / move-out work goes further still, adding inside cabinets and drawers, wall marks, and switch-plate detail.

If you are weighing which one your home needs, our comparison of deep cleaning vs. standard cleaning is the shortest route to an answer. And a full deep cleaning is where the 50 points live.

Can I customize the list?

Yes — the 50 is a floor, not a ceiling. It is the baseline of what is always included, and you can layer extras on top: inside fridge, inside oven, interior windows, laundry, and more.

You can also subtract. Households with a home office they would rather we skip, or a room kept closed, just say so at booking and the scope is written down before the crew arrives.

Why 50 and not 20 or 100?

Fifty is the point where the list is complete enough to be honest and short enough to be finished properly. A much shorter list leaves too much to interpretation. A far longer one turns into theater, where the crew is ticking boxes instead of scrubbing grout.

We arrived at these five sections across 5,000+ homes cleaned since 2021 — work that stands behind 850+ five-star reviews at a 4.9 rating, including 565 on Google and 196 on Yelp.

Does the checklist work the same in every city we serve?

Yes, and that is the whole point of having one. The same 50 points run in Irvine, where our office sits in 92618, in Newport Beach, and in Tustin.

What changes is emphasis, not scope. Coastal homes need more attention on glass and metal — covered in our guide to cleaning a coastal home in Newport Beach — while inland homes lean harder on dust after a wind week. The list stays 50 either way.

Getting a quote against the list

Ask for the checklist before you book anyone, us included. We publish ours, we quote against it upfront with no hidden fees, and we reply to quote requests as soon as possible during business hours, with same-day availability when you need it fast.