Pollen season in North Jersey is brutal. By the time the oaks finish dumping their yellow-green dust, every window on your house is coated — and rain just turns it into streaky paste. Knocking out a spring window cleaning before the bloom saves you from looking through gauze for two months. Here’s the five-item checklist.
1. Inside cleaning — do it first
Counterintuitive, but true: when you do interior windows first, you spot streaks that are actually on the outside. Use a microfiber cloth and a 50/50 distilled water + vinegar solution. Skip the blue cleaners — they leave residue.
2. Pull every screen
Take screens out, lay them flat in the driveway, and rinse with a garden hose. A soft brush and gentle dish soap clear off the bug carcasses, pollen, and cobwebs. Dry them in the sun before re-installing.
3. Clean the tracks & sills
The dirty secret of window cleaning: the glass is the easy part. Tracks collect dirt, dead bugs, and a black silt that no one ever cleans. Vacuum out the loose stuff first, then wipe with a damp cloth and an old toothbrush. This is what makes a window look new.
4. Outside — squeegee, don’t spray
For ground-floor windows, squeegee technique beats every spray-on cleaner ever made: wet the glass with soapy water, pull a squeegee in straight horizontal swipes, wipe the squeegee blade between each pull. For second-story and up — that’s a water-fed pole job. Either rent one, or call us.
5. Inspect frames & caulking
While you’ve got everything open: look for cracked caulk, peeling paint, or rot at the bottom corners. Fixing it now is a $20 tube of caulk. Catching it next spring after a winter of water intrusion is a $400 sash repair.
The lazy option
If this all sounds like a Saturday you don’t want to spend on windows: a typical spring window cleaning from us — inside, outside, screens, tracks, and sills — runs $300–$650 for most North Jersey homes. We do every step on this list, and we don’t leave streaks.
Have a question we didn’t cover? Our crew answers the phone during business hours — (201) 514-5382 — or grab a free written quote on the contact page.
