Lakeland Has Four Kinds of Units, and They Are Nothing Alike
Most cleaning companies treat "apartment" like one thing. In Lakeland that gets you in trouble fast, because this city has almost a century of housing stacked on top of itself inside a ten-minute drive.
South Lake Morton and Dixieland are full of 1920s and 1930s homes that were carved into duplexes and garage apartments decades ago. Those units have plaster walls, original wood trim, tall baseboards, transom windows over the doors, and heart-pine floors that will not forgive a wet mop. Then you have the student rentals around Florida Southern College and Southeastern University, which empty out every May and refill every August like clockwork. Out toward Harden Boulevard, Grasslands, and the Polk Parkway corridor you get 1990s and 2000s condos with tile, screened lanais, and an HOA that has opinions. And on the north and south edges, Sandpiper, Bonny Shores, Pine Ridge Estates and a long list of 55+ communities where the resident's daughter in Ohio is usually the one calling us.
What every one of them shares is the Polk County air. Central Florida humidity does not care how new your building is. It parks in a bathroom with a weak exhaust fan, it grays out the caulk line, it stains grout, and it makes a closed-up condo smell like a closed-up condo within about three weeks. Add February through April oak and pine pollen drifting in through the AC and open windows, and a small unit picks up film on every flat surface faster than a house does.
This page is unit cleaning built for Lakeland specifically. If you own or rent a single-family house here instead, our Lakeland deep cleaning page is the better read.