Getting your Boulder home ready for holiday guests
A deep clean before guests arrive is mostly about the places people actually look at: the kitchen, the bathrooms, the room they'll sleep in, and the entry. Some of it is an afternoon of your own work. Some of it, like ovens, grout and a whole house at once, is where many people hire help. Here is a checklist by room, so you can decide which is which.
Checklist by room
- Kitchen: empty and wipe the fridge, clean inside the oven and microwave, wipe cabinet fronts and handles, degrease the stovetop and hood, clean the sink and counters.
- Bathrooms: scrub grout, clean the tub or shower, descale faucets, wipe mirrors, wash the bath mat and floor.
- Guest bedroom: wash the linens, flip or vacuum the mattress, clear some closet and drawer space, and vacuum under the bed.
- Entry and floors: clear the entry, wash or vacuum mats, vacuum and mop every floor, including edges and baseboards.
- Windows and sills: wipe sills and tracks, clean the glass guests will see, dust blinds.
Yourself or hire out?
A reasonable split: do the daily-use surfaces yourself in the last two days, such as counters, linens, mirrors and the entry, and consider hiring out the jobs that take the most time or equipment, such as oven and grout work, or a whole-house floor-to-baseboard clean. If you hire, send the size of the home and the date you need it done by, so a business can tell you quickly whether it fits.
Book ahead
If you want help, ask any cleaning business how far out it is booking this time of year. We can't tell you how booked any business is, so asking early is the safe move.
Typical prices
Boulder cleaners often charge about $24–30 an hour, based on providers listed on Care.com (as of October 2026). We didn't find a published holiday-specific price, so we don't quote one. This is a reference range, not a quote. You choose your offer. Offers well below that range may not get taken.
How Sweepstead works
Sweepstead is new. We're starting in Boulder now and still signing up our first cleaning businesses, so we can't promise that a business will take every job.
- Send the job, the date and what you'd like to pay.
- We send it to independent local cleaning businesses. Before a business gets any jobs from us, we ask for its current certificate of liability insurance.
- The first business to say yes contacts you. You agree the price and details with the business, and you pay the cleaning business directly.
Send your holiday deep-clean job
Prefer email? Email tidyboulder@gmail.com. Send your zip code, not your street address. We pass your address only to the business that takes your job, and only after you say OK.