No one likes coming home to a wrecked home that’s a mess everywhere you look. When this happens, what is your first thought? Just pick a few things up, straighten up the room—tidy up?

We’d be willing to bet when you’ve just arrived back to a messy home after a time away, your first thought wasn’t to do a complete makeover on your space—a deep home cleaning.

You may be wondering, “What’s really the difference between simply tidying up and taking the time to perform a deep cleaning?”

Let us tell you.

What does it mean to “tidy up?”

The true definition of “tidy up” is to make small changes that make something “better.” The key in that definition is that these are “small changes.”

What’s a deep home cleaning?

With deep cleaning of the home, the difference of the cleanliness of your pre- and post- deep clean is very noticeable. The saying, “…you reap what you sow,” applies when deep cleaning the home. You really have to dig deep and get those cracks and corners that are always overlooked. This task can be very time consuming. On the other hand, tidying up can take as little as 5 minutes to accomplish.

Tidying up may consist of folding the blankets that lay on the couch, propping the pillows up, picking up yesterday’s shoes, taking dishes to the kitchen, or throwing miscellaneous trash away. In contrast, deep cleaning of the home consists of much, much, more. For instance, you would need to wipe the windowsills, vacuum and wash the baseboards, scrub the shower and sink, scrub the interior of microwave, and dust the blinds for the cleaning to be considered a deep cleaning.

Furthermore, as you can imagine, the tasks performed in a deep home cleaning are much more tedious. Thus, they require more time and energy than do the tasks of merely “tidying up.”

If you’re serious about deep cleaning your home, but can’t do all the work, or just don’t have the time, there are several options.

One of those options is using a cleaning service to perform a deep home cleaning.

Most cleaning services have tiers of services they offer.

For instance, at Mom’s Standard, our eco-friendly cleaning service that operates in the Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens area, we have different cleaning options from which you can choose.

The tiers of services we offer include maintenance cleaning, simple cleaning, deep cleaning, total home care, and move in/out cleaning. Each tier is specifically designed according to the specific needs of our customers’ homes. For example, a simple cleaning is designed for working families and those with pets, while a deep home cleaning is designed for those who rarely clean or whose home has not been cleaned in the last 30 days.

Understandably, with each of those tiers, comes a different price.

Since a simple clean is, well, “…simple,” it is going to be a cheaper option than a deep home clean. This price largely reflects the time it takes to achieve each cleaning. Similarly, the price is also affected by the size of the home that is being cleaned, which also impacts time.

Specifically, if you have a small studio apartment that is approximately 350 square feet, a simple clean would be $150 (approx. 2.5 hours), while a deep clean for that same apartment would be $250 (approx. 5 hours).

For a bigger space, such as a three-bedroom home, a simple cleaning would be $225 (approx. 4 hours) and a deep cleaning service would be $350 (approx. 8 hours).

Next time you find your home being a little too messy for your liking, consider your options…

Would a quick tidying up do the job or is your home due for a deep home cleaning?

The best way to keep a clean and tidy house is to create a sturdy foundation from which to build. When you start with a very clean house, it’s much easier to maintain a cleaner home for longer. Alternately, starting with a sort-of-clean house and constantly battling the assorted day-to-day mess, is going to be more time-consuming—and frustrating—in the long run, over the long term.