How we clean Santa Teresa
The hills do two things to a house down here. In late spring the grass on the ridge turns and the seed heads travel, ending up in door channels, on sills and across the entry tile. From July the ground is dry enough that any breeze lays a fine gray film over horizontal surfaces within days of a visit. Households near Bernal Road and through the Los Paseos streets notice it most of all.
The houses themselves are sensible things. Seventies tracts of 1,300 to 1,900 square feet, some on one level, some with three bedrooms upstairs, almost all with an attached garage and a concrete patio. Kitchens have generally been updated once. Bathrooms frequently have not, which means fiberglass surrounds gone chalky that need a non-abrasive polish rather than a scouring pad.
What we walk into in Santa Teresa
Split roughly evenly between one and two floors, on slabs, stucco outside and eight-foot ceilings inside. Carpet still covers most bedroom floors while wet rooms are vinyl or tile. Sliding patio doors are universal and their channels are the dirtiest thing in the house from June to October. A few condo and townhome clusters sit near the rail line with shared paths and numbered guest bays. Air conditioning runs hard, so vents and returns go gray quickly.