Deep cleaning, room by room, Los Angeles.

Kitchen grime is airborne fat that has cooled onto everything within about two metres of the burners. It does not come off with an all-purpose spray; it needs a degreaser with dwell time — applied, left for several minutes, then lifted rather than scrubbed, so the finish on your cabinet doors survives it.

I pull the hood filter and soak it. I clear the gap between range and counter, degrease the splashback, and wipe cabinet tops where dust has bonded into a tacky film. Inside the fridge: shelves out, seals cleaned, drip channel cleared. Stainless gets a final pass with the grain so it is not left streaked.

Two separate problems live in a bathroom and they need opposite chemistry. Limescale is mineral and comes off with acid. Soap scum and body oil are not, and acid barely touches them. Used in the wrong order you polish the scale and leave the film, which is why a bathroom can look cleaned and still feel slightly greasy.

So: degrease first, descale second, rinse fully between. Grout gets brushed, not wiped. The shower door track is emptied and dried. Chrome is buffed dry so it does not spot. Extractor grille dusted, hinge undersides and the bolt caps behind the toilet done by hand.

Bedrooms are a dust job, and dust here is mostly textile fibre and skin — the thing people actually react to overnight. A dry cloth moves it around. I use damp microfibre, folded in quarters, turned to a clean face often, working top down so nothing lands on finished surfaces.

Beds get moved, not vacuumed around. Skirting, headboard top edge, lamp shades, the backs of door handles, window tracks and sill corners. Mattress vacuumed on request; linens changed if you leave them out. Mirrors last, so they stay clear.

The living room is where finishes are most mixed and most easily damaged — oiled wood next to a screen next to wool. Nothing here gets a single product. Wood is cleaned barely damp and dried immediately; screens get a dry microfibre only; fabric is vacuumed with the upholstery head rather than wiped.

Supply and return vents are brushed out: they are the reason a room re-dusts two days after cleaning. Cushions come up, crumbs and coins out of the frame, bases vacuumed. Baseboards, skirting corners, under rugs, behind the TV cabinet where cable dust mats.

Every particle that enters the house passes through here twice a day, so entries hold more actual soil than any other surface in the home. Treads get vacuumed with a crevice tool along the nose and the back seam, where grit collects and slowly cuts the fibre.

Risers — the vertical faces — carry scuff and shoe transfer and are almost always left. Those are wiped individually, along with spindles, handrail underside, the door’s bottom rail, the threshold, and the dust strip behind the door that only appears when the door is closed.