What house cleaning costs in Chesterton and Dune Acres

Chesterton is ten minutes from where my day starts, so no drive is built into these numbers. They match Valparaiso, which surprises people who expect the lake side of the county to cost more across the board.

What it costs by size

These are for a clean every two weeks, the rhythm most Chesterton homes settle on:

• 2 bed, 1 bath, about 1,100 sq ft: around $205
• 3 bed, 2 bath, about 1,800 sq ft: around $285
• 4 bed, 2.5 bath, about 2,900 sq ft: around $365
• 5 bed, 3.5 bath, about 3,600 sq ft: priced once I have seen photos of the home

Dune Acres is priced on its own

Dune Acres shares the 46304 ZIP with the rest of Chesterton, but its homes are a different job: larger, often architect designed, with a great deal of glass facing the water. The same 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home is about $305 every two weeks there and about $605 for the first deep clean. I would rather you read that here than hear it for the first time on a call.

The first visit

The first clean is the deep one. Baseboards by hand, blinds, vents, the tops of door frames and behind whatever moves. For the 1,800 square foot home it is about $565 on its own, or $510 if a regular rhythm starts with it, and it happens once.

Sand, damp and the lake

From April on, sand comes in on every shoe and packs into door runners, and damp air off the lake fogs glass and dulls hardware faster than it does a few miles south. A regular clean here spends real time at the entries and the windows for that reason, and that time is already in the prices above.

What you are paying for

The same housekeeper at every visit, and it is me. The nine steps I follow are written down, so the fortieth visit gets the same care as the first. After each one you get a short note on anything worth knowing, and a missed spot reported within a day gets redone free. You pay after the work, never before.