Spring Cleaning in Brentwood.
Ready on Arrival

Spring in the Brentwood canyons is not subtle. The chaparral covering the slopes above Mandeville, Kenter, and Sullivan pushes out pollen for weeks, and it does not stay outside. It settles on screens, works through window channels, coats vent registers, and ends up in the fan blades. Meanwhile the shaded flank of a hillside house has spent winter under marine-layer damp, so the season that dusts one elevation leaves the other with mildew in the grout.

An annual clean answers both conditions in one visit. We work the sun-facing side as a dust problem: screens brushed and rinsed, sills and tracks vacuumed then washed, registers and fan blades cleared, drapes gone over with HEPA equipment. We work the shaded side as a moisture problem: grout scrubbed and treated, weep holes cleared so channels drain, closets emptied at the floor and aired, and any soft goods that smell musty pulled for laundering.

The rest is once-a-year work nobody does in a normal month. Under and behind furniture. Cabinet and pantry tops. Light fixtures taken down. Baseboards washed rather than dusted. Patio thresholds cleared of a winter's accumulated litter. Most Brentwood households book between late winter and early summer, once the heaviest canyon pollen weeks have passed.