If you've ever looked at a cleaning service's website, you've probably seen the phrase "comprehensive checklist." Sometimes it's "30 points." Sometimes "50." Sometimes — boldly — "100+ points."
Almost none of them publish what's on the list.
Ours is at /services. Forty-seven items, organized by room. This post is about how to read it, and what tells you whether any checklist is real.
What a real checklist looks like
A real checklist is room-by-room and surface-specific. "Kitchen" is not a checklist item. "Wipe down all countertops, edges, and backsplashes" is. "Hand-clean inside of microwave" is. "Polish sink and faucet to a streak-free shine" is.
When you see a service publishing items at that level of granularity, they've thought about it. They've trained against it. The cleaner who shows up at your door has a mental model of the same list.
When you see vague phrasing — "we'll dust all surfaces, vacuum all floors, clean all bathrooms" — it usually means the cleaner is making real-time decisions about what counts. That's not a standard. That's a preference.
Why 47 and not 100
Forty-seven is the number of things we actually do every visit, that we can train against, that we can verify in a photo summary, and that we'd defend in a re-clean conversation. It's not a marketing number.
We've seen lists in the 100s. They look impressive. When you read them, you find half the items are duplicates ("vacuum living room" + "vacuum under living room couch" + "vacuum living room corners"). The checklist got long because the marketing department needed it to.
Forty-seven specific items beat 100 vague ones every time.
How to use the list
The real value of the published list is two things:
- Setting expectations. Read the list before your first reset. If something you'd want isn't on it, ask. We may already do it informally, or we may genuinely not — better to know up front.
- Calling our bluff. If something on the list wasn't done, that's a 24-hour Re-Clean Promise call. The list is the contract.
That's the whole point of publishing it. A checklist isn't transparent just because it exists. It's transparent because anyone — you, your neighbor, a competitor — can hold us to it.
Where to read it
The full 47-point checklist lives at spotlesssummitcleaning.com/services, categorized by room. You can also grab a PDF for your fridge or to compare with other services you're evaluating.