Port Melbourne · Postcode 3207
House Cleaning Melbourne CBD for Apartments and Homes in 3000
A different person at your door every fortnight. A cleaner who cannot get past the lobby because nobody booked the lift.
OneDrop FM provides house cleaning in Melbourne CBD for apartments, townhouses and homes across postcode 3000, from the towers on Spencer Street to the converted buildings off Flinders Lane. Our cleaners are employed by us, police checked, and the same cleaner comes back to your apartment each visit. We sort building access before the first clean, work seven days, and agree the price before anyone starts.
Get a Quote
Directly employed team, not labour hire
Police checked, every cleaner
Public liability insured, certificate same day
Fixed quotes, priced on site
Scope of work
What do our house cleaning services in Melbourne CBD include?
The list below is the standard clean. You can add to it or take things off it when we quote.
Kitchen benches and sink
City kitchens are small, so bench space gets used hard. Benches, sink, tap and the join where the tap meets the stone.
Cupboard fronts and handles
Galley kitchens mean you brush past the same three cupboard doors every day. Fronts, handle undersides and the hinge line.
Stovetop and splashback
Knobs come off so we reach underneath them. Splashback back to the grout line.
Rangehood filters
Filters come down. In an apartment with no window over the cooktop, the rangehood is doing all the work, so a clogged filter shows quickly.
Oven and dishwasher exteriors
Doors, edges and rubber seals. Dishwasher filters rinsed and put back.
Bathrooms and shower screens
Basins, taps, screens, tiles, toilets inside and out, and the seal lines where the shower meets the tiles.
Bathroom exhaust fans and air vents
Both matter more in an apartment than a house, because there is often no window to open.
Balcony doors, glass and floor
Cleaned from the inside, along with the door track. We do not clean external glass at height.
Window tracks
The channel under the window, which is where grit collects in a tower.
Floors throughout
Vacuumed first, then mopped on hard surfaces. Carpet needing more than a vacuum is its own job, and we do carpet cleaning in Melbourne CBD too.
Dusting from the ceiling down
Cobwebs, light fittings, picture rails and skirting boards.
Bins
Emptied, wiped and relined.
Domestic house cleaning in Melbourne CBD works from the ceiling down, and in a small apartment that order matters more than it does in a house. Everything is within a few metres of everything else, so dust knocked off a vent lands on the bench you just did. The Better Health Channel, run by the Victorian Government, notes that cleaning frequently touched surfaces is what reduces the spread of germs at home. In a one bedroom apartment there are fewer of those surfaces, but every one of them gets touched far more often.
Pricing
How much does house cleaning cost in Melbourne CBD?
House cleaning Melbourne CBD prices depend on the size of the apartment, how many bathrooms it has, how often you book, and the condition at the first visit. Booking platforms list apartment cleaning in the city between $110 and $260 a job, with a median around $170. Other Melbourne companies advertise $71 an hour for regular cleaning, or $115 for the first two hours then $45 an hour after that.
Those are hourly rates and platform averages. We quote a fixed price instead, and it is worth understanding why the two are different products.
An hourly rate prices the cleaner’s time. A fixed quote prices your apartment. The difference shows up on a first visit, when nobody yet knows whether your place takes two hours or four. Some companies argue hourly gives you more control, and on a studio that can be true. Our view is that most people would rather hear the number before they commit than watch it form while someone works.
So we come out, look through the apartment with you, and give you a price. That price is what you pay.
What changes the price
How do you get into my building if I am not home?
Most people are at work when we clean. In a house that means a key. In a tower it usually means something else, and we sort it before the first visit rather than on the day.
Concierge and building management
Many city buildings want cleaners signed in at the desk or listed with building management. We arrange that in advance so nobody is waiting in the lobby.
Swipe cards, fobs and codes
Where your building issues them, we work to whatever your owners corporation allows.
Key safes
Some buildings permit them and some do not. We follow your building rules, not our preference.
Lift bookings and loading dock times
Larger towers restrict when service lifts can be used. Tell us your building and we work inside those windows.
Local knowledge
The homes we clean across Melbourne CBD
Around 55,000 people live inside the Hoddle Grid, and most of them live in apartments. The reason there are so many is a deliberate one. The Postcode 3000 policy offered incentives that turned empty lower grade office buildings into housing and brought new towers with them, before the same shift spread to Southbank, Docklands and Carlton. That history is still visible in what we clean.
Converted office buildings
Apartments made from former office floors have layouts no architect would draw from scratch. Windows that do not open, odd corners, services running through cupboards. Air quality is the practical issue, so vents and exhaust fans matter more here than in a house
Purpose built towers
West Side Place on Spencer Street, built on the old site of The Age, holds close to 1,400 apartments across two towers. Premier Tower nearby runs 78 floors. Aspire Melbourne sits at 301 King Street. Buildings like these pack more surface into less floor, so a two bedroom apartment can take as long as a larger house. The things that get missed are always the same: balcony glass, window tracks, splashbacks and the seal lines in bathrooms.
Student studios and one bedders
The RMIT Quarter at the north end of the grid, around Swanston Street and La Trobe Street, brings a large student population into small apartments. These are quick jobs and we price them as quick jobs.
Townhouses and older homes
There are still homes with stairs and street frontage inside the grid and along its edges. They clean more like a house than an apartment, and we treat them that way.
One thing city apartments share is moisture. Sealed windows and small bathrooms mean damp air has nowhere to go, which is why shower silicone and exhaust fans need attention here that a house with an openable window does not need.
A 67 storey tower approved for the Queen Street end will add more than 1,500 homes, including around 900 student units. The city is still filling in, and new apartments arrive with building dust in them that does not vacuum out on the first pass.
How often to book a regular clean
Regular home cleaning in Melbourne CBD is usually booked fortnightly. That fits how most city households run, with median rent around $381 a week and a population weighted towards students, working professionals and downsizers rather than large families.
Weekly
Suits shared apartments, homes with pets, and anyone working from home full time.
Fortnightly
It’s the common choice. Enough time passes to be worth it, not enough for anything to get away from you.
Monthly
suits studios and one bedders where one person tidies as they go.
Single visits
work before guests arrive, after a party, at the end of a renovation, or when you want the place reset. Moving out is a different job to a different standard, so that runs through our end of lease cleaning.
The difference
The same cleaner in your apartment, every visit
Ask people in the city what they want from a cleaner and the answers are consistent: on time, easy to communicate with, thorough. Not complicated, but hard to get from a rotating cast of strangers who have never been in the building before.
Our cleaners are on our payroll. Not agency contractors you pay directly, not franchisees who bought a territory, not names pulled off an app. The Cleaning Services Award 2020 sets the rates and entitlements that employed cleaners receive, and that is the practical reason continuity is possible at all. Turnover is what breaks it, and turnover follows pay.
Every cleaner holds a current police check.
In the city there is a second thing worth knowing about your cleaner, which is whether they know your building. A cleaner who has been to your tower before knows which lift takes equipment, where the loading dock sits, and which desk to sign in at. That knowledge is lost every time a new person is sent, and it is lost again the visit after that. Keeping the same cleaner keeps it.
When your cleaner takes leave we tell you first, and whoever covers is briefed on both your apartment and your building.
Metecan Kalkan founded OneDrop FM and still runs it. There is a person to call.
OneDrop FM | 15 Years Experience | Melbourne, Australia
Straight answers
How our cleaners work inside your home
Nothing of yours gets moved
Framed work, photographs and anything on display stay where they are. Ask us to dust the top of a frame and two people handle it, one steadying and one cleaning. In an apartment where shelves sit close to walkways, this comes up more than you would think.
An unsure cleaner picks up the phone
Deciding what is rubbish and what you are keeping is not a cleaner’s call to make in someone else’s home. They ring the office and we ring you.
Anything that will not shift gets photographed
Old marks, worn silicone, a stain set into grout. You get the photo and the note the same day, while there is still time to do something about it.
Two metres is the ceiling on ladder work, and nobody does it alone
Our cleaners carry a three step ladder and stay on it. Safe Work Australia treats any work at height as a fall risk requiring controls. You are never asked to supply a ladder of your own, which some companies do require.
Everything arrives with us
Vacuum, mop, cloths, products. Storage is scarce in a city apartment and plenty of people living in one do not own a vacuum at all. You should not need to.
Three steps on a smooth surface, not one
Wash, dry, polish. Microfibre drags slightly on anything still stuck, which is the cleaner’s signal to go over it again before drying rather than sealing it in.
Getting started
Booking your first clean
Tell us your building
The address does most of the work here, because we may already know its access rules.
Ten minutes at the apartment
We look at floors, bathrooms, balcony glass and anything you want handled a particular way, then confirm how access will work on the days you are out.
A price in writing & Your cleaner is assigned
Fixed, with the scope beside it. The same one returns each visit.
A record after every clean
Including anything that could not be done, and why.
Satisfaction Guarantee
Our Promise
Backed by our 200% guarantee
If something is missed, tell us and we come back and fix it. Our work is covered by a 200% guarantee.
Coverage
Areas we cover around Melbourne CBD
We work across the whole of postcode 3000, from the Queen Victoria Market end down to Flinders Street, and through the Spencer Street and Docklands edge of the grid.
We also clean in Southbank, South Wharf, Docklands, East Melbourne and Carlton.
If you run a business in the city rather than living in one, see office cleaning in Melbourne CBD.
Not in the list? Call 0402 160 946 – if we cover your postcode, we will tell you straight away.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to book your house cleaner now?
Call 0402 160 946 or email Mattk@onedropfm.com.au to book house cleaning in Melbourne CBD. We work seven days across 3000 and the surrounding suburbs, we quote on site before we start, and every job is backed by our 200% guarantee.
OneDrop FM | Melbourne, Australia | 0402 160 946