House Cleaning in Peterborough County

The county divides into three kinds of property, and each behaves differently. There are the villages — Lakefield, Bridgenorth, Norwood, Havelock, Millbrook — which are essentially small-town streets with the same mix of century homes and post-war builds you find in the city. There are rural properties on acreage. And there is waterfront, on Chemong, Buckhorn, Stony and the smaller lakes.

Waterfront properties are their own thing. A cottage that has been shut since October needs a different visit from a house that was lived in last week: cobwebs everywhere, mouse evidence, a season of dust on every horizontal surface, and often a fridge that has been off. That is a first-time deep clean, not a standard one, and it is worth booking it as such rather than being surprised on the day.

Distance matters here in a way it does not in the city. A booking well outside the city limits carries a travel component, and a lockout at a rural property costs more than one on Aylmer Street because the crew has already driven the half hour. Leaving a reliable way in — a lockbox code, a key with a neighbour — is the single thing that most often goes wrong on a county booking.