First confirm that it is safe to enter. If the storm may have affected the structure, wiring, or gas service, do not enter, open the house, or use fans or appliances until officials or a qualified professional clears it. Then air and dry the house, handle the refrigerator, clear the lanai, vacuum the tracks, and only then wash surfaces. Once hazards are cleared, cleanup is an order-of-operations problem, not a product problem.
Almost everything written about this is written for a flooded house — water extraction, moisture meters, an insurance claim. Right answer for that house. Once the structure and utilities are cleared and there is no contaminated water or hidden moisture, another Miami-Dade case remains: the power went out, leaf litter and roof grit came through the lanai, and the house smells shut in. Only then is it a cleaning job, and the order decides whether it takes an afternoon or a whole weekend.
This is the other half of a pair. If the storm caught you prepared, the lanai is already cleared and the laundry is already done (how to clean and prep your house before a hurricane). What follows is what comes next.
The order, step by step
Seven steps, and the order matters more than any single one of them. Do one of these out of sequence and you will end up doing it twice.
- Get clearance, then air the house. Do not enter, open the house, switch on fans, or handle appliances if the storm may have damaged the structure, wiring, or gas service. Wait until local officials or a qualified professional has cleared those concerns; if you cannot confirm clearance, stay out. Once the home is cleared, the weather has passed, and the yard is safe to stand in, open opposite sides for cross-ventilation and place fans where air stalls — closets, the back of a walk-in shower, behind furniture on an exterior wall. Every cleaning step after this adds water to the room, so ventilate before adding any.
- Deal with the refrigerator. It is the one step with a deadline nobody controls, and it is the one people leave for last because they dread it. If the power was out, decide about the food first and clean the empty box second — never the other way around, because you will end up washing shelves twice. Shelves and drawers come out and get washed in the sink or the tub, not in the unit. Then the door gasket, then the drip tray, then the floor under it.
- Bring the outside back in — the things, not the dirt. The cushions, the mat, the pots and the light furniture you stacked inside before the storm all come back out. Hose them off outside and dry them outside; carrying a soaked cushion through the living room is how the living room becomes the next job. Anything padded that stayed soaked through gets a decision, not a scrub — see below.
- Clear the lanai and whatever you can reach from the ground. Leaf litter, seed pods, roof grit and small branches, off the screen enclosure and off the deck, then out of the gutters, scuppers and deck drains you can reach standing on the ground. Nothing on this list is worth a ladder or a roof, and none of it is worth doing while the bands are still coming through. Wet leaf litter left on a screen or a pool cage is what leaves a mark you will be scrubbing in September.
- Vacuum the tracks, then test them. Slider and window tracks fill during a storm with exactly the mix that clogs them: sand, shredded leaf, roof grit. A packed track is a dam — the weep slots at the outside edge stop draining, and the next ordinary afternoon downpour puts the water on your floor instead. Crevice tool, wipe the channel, then pour a cup of water in and watch it leave. If it does not leave, the channel is still packed.
- Floors last, dry pass before wet pass. Sweep or vacuum the whole floor before a mop touches it. Storm grit is sharp and there is a lot of it, and mopping it is how you sand your own tile and put a grey film in the grout lines. Dry pass first, everywhere, including the entry mat area and the strip inside every exterior door. Then mop, and change the water more often than you think you need to.
- Then, and only then, wash surfaces. Counters, tables, the handles and switches everyone touched in the dark, the inside of the front door. This is the step people start with, and starting with it means doing it twice — because the tracks were still packed, the floor was still gritty, and the lanai was still coming in on everybody’s shoes.
“After confirming it is safe to enter, almost nobody starts with the air. Almost everybody starts with the kitchen counter, which is last on the list — which is why they do it twice.”
What gets washed, and what gets thrown out
This is the decision that saves the most time and is the hardest one to make. The useful rule is not how wet a thing got, it is what it is made of. A hard, non-porous surface — tile, glass, steel, plastic, sealed wood, a resin patio chair — washes, dries, and is what it was. A padded, porous material that stayed soaked through — cushion fill, carpet padding, a cardboard box that had been on the closet floor for two years, a pool float — does not come back from scrubbing, and scrubbing it is trading work for nothing.
That is not a health claim and we are not going to dress it up as one — it is a cleaning calculation. Soaked porous material takes far longer to dry than people expect, and in June, in a shut house, “nearly dry” is still wet. If it is padded, if it sat soaked for hours, and you cannot open it up to dry it from the inside, it goes. The hard stuff is worth rescuing: wash it, dry it all the way through, put it away dry.
About products and disinfecting
We are not going to recommend a brand, tell you what a product kills, or give you a contact time. The only honest source for that is the label on the bottle — it is what states what the product is registered for, at what dilution, and how long the surface has to stay wet — and it is what answers for it. Read it, ventilate while you work, and never mix two products. What is our ground is the sequence: a surface has to be clean before any product does its job on it. That is why the surface wash-down sits at the end of the list rather than the start.
Where a cleaning job stops
A wet floor and a wet baseboard are cleaning. Water that got inside something — drywall, insulation, a cabinet base, the pad under a carpet, an air handler — is not. That is restoration, it usually runs through your insurer, and a cleaning visit on top of it only hides the problem for about a week. If moisture is trapped and mold turns up, we take the who-to-call decision apart separately, with no invented thresholds, in when to call a professional for mold instead of cleaning it yourself.
We put it in our own Terms, in these words: we reserve the right to refuse or stop service where conditions are unsafe for our team — such as mold, infestation, biohazards, or abusive behavior. If we stop early for safety, a partial refund applies for the unworked portion. We would rather you read that before you book than have us find out in your living room.
When you would rather hand it over
The after-the-storm reset is exactly what our deep cleaning in Miami page calls a seasonal reset — its own copy reads “Spring + fall — Miami pollen, hurricane dust, holiday entertaining”. It is a 4–6 hour visit with a 2-person team, 42 items verified by photo, starting at $375. That page is the source of those figures and the one that gets updated; we are restating them here so the answer sits next to the question.
Two things from the list above are add-ons you choose in the booking flow and are priced separately: sliding-door track cleaning, and patio or balcony cleaning. The refrigerator is separate too, with its own published figure: empty refrigerator $65, refrigerator with food $85. You see the number before you confirm; it does not turn up later on an invoice you never saw coming.
On eligible completed visits your CleanCheck report follows — that visit’s checklist status and customer-safe photos — with a 24h reclean if anything was missed. In a storm week, knowing exactly what got done in your house is worth more than usual.
And the schedule that week
The season runs June through November and we schedule normally right through it. The policy is published rather than improvised: cancel or reschedule free up to 24 hours before your appointment; inside 24 hours, a $25 cancellation fee applies; and we may need to reschedule for weather, safety, or staffing reasons — we will tell you as soon as we know, and you never pay a fee for a reschedule we initiate. That last sentence exists for weeks exactly like this one.
Quick answers
What should I clean first after a hurricane?
Clearance comes first: do not enter, open the house, switch on fans, or handle appliances until possible structural, wiring, and gas-service damage has been cleared by local officials or a qualified professional. After clearance, air the house, then handle the refrigerator, outside debris, window and slider tracks, floors dry-before-wet, and surfaces. Airing leads the cleaning sequence because later steps add moisture; surfaces stay last so you do not clean them twice.
Storm water got in through a door. Is that a cleaning job?
After the property is cleared, clean rainwater limited to a tile surface and nonporous trim may be a cleaning job. MDF or wood baseboards, contaminated water, or moisture that wicked through trim or into drywall, carpet padding, insulation, cabinet bases, or an air handler needs a qualified water-damage assessment and may require restoration. Our Terms allow us to refuse or stop where conditions are unsafe; a partial refund applies to the unworked portion when we stop early for safety.
What product should I use to disinfect after a storm?
We will not name one, and we will not tell you what any product kills or how long to leave it on. The label on the bottle is the only honest source for that, and the only one answerable for it: read it, use the dilution it gives, respect the contact time it prints, ventilate, and never mix two products. The part that is ours is the order — a surface has to be clean before any product does its job on it.
The power was out for two days. What does that mean for the refrigerator?
Food decisions are yours, and food-safety authorities are far better placed than a cleaning company to guide them. The cleaning half is simple: once it is empty, wash the shelves and drawers outside the unit, do the door gasket and the drip tray, and prop the doors open while it is off so it does not close up damp. If you would rather hand it over, our booking flow prices it as a separate add-on — empty refrigerator $65, refrigerator with food $85 — and you see the figure before you confirm.
Will you still come if a storm is in the forecast that week?
We schedule normally through the season and tell you the moment that changes. Our Terms are the whole policy: cancel or reschedule free up to 24 hours before your appointment; inside 24 hours a $25 cancellation fee applies; and we may need to reschedule for weather, safety, or staffing reasons — we will tell you as soon as we know, and you never pay a fee for a reschedule we initiate. Storm week is exactly the week that clause exists for.
The short version
Air, refrigerator, outside, tracks, floors dry-then-wet, surfaces last. Hard things wash; padded things that stayed soaked go. The label on the bottle is the only honest source about the bottle. And if the water got inside a material, that is not a cleaning job, and we will tell you so instead of billing you for it.
This guide is part of the JAS operating playbook — written for the half of a hurricane almost nobody writes about: the after.