Yes. Cash, jewelry, prescription medications, passports, and anything small and expensive go in one place before the crew arrives — ten minutes, one drawer or one safe. The reason isn’t suspicion. It’s that a thing you put away can never become a thing nobody can account for.
That’s what to ask before anyone gets a key. Our answers are published: $2M general liability, background-checked teams, and a CleanCheck photo report on eligible completed visits. Message us and we’ll send a price for your place alongside them.
The reason is ambiguity, not accusation
Picture the version where you don’t. A ring lived on the bathroom counter; Tuesday the crew came; Friday the ring isn’t where you remember leaving it. Nothing was stolen — it had been in a coat pocket since the night you wore it out in Coral Gables — but that week costs your household something real: the conversation about whether to say anything, the text you draft and delete, and a crew you are now watching instead of working with. Securing the small things before the visit deletes that entire week in advance.
That is the whole argument, and it is worth being precise about what it is not. It is not a claim that theft is rare, and it is not a claim that theft is common. We will not give you a number: none of the sources one would have to come from publishes it, which we spend an entire article on — how common is theft by house cleaners, really?. A precaution that rests on an invented statistic is built on sand. This habit doesn’t need one.
“Putting things away isn’t distrust. It’s answering, in advance, the question nobody wants to ask afterward.”
The short list worth putting away
The list is deliberately short. It covers what is small, portable, hard to account for, or easy to move by accident during a visit that moves objects by design:
- Cash and gift cards. The category defines itself: once it moves, it leaves no trace. That includes the holiday-tip envelope and the coin jar in the laundry room.
- Jewelry and watches — especially pieces that aren’t scheduled on your policy, and the ones that live loose on a counter or a nightstand rather than in a box.
- Prescription medications, in one closed place. Bathroom surfaces are precisely what gets wiped, so a bottle left out gets picked up and set down somewhere.
- Passports, documents, and checkbooks — including the closing folder or the tax paperwork that has been on the dining table for three weeks.
- Small things that don’t look valuable. A spare car-key fob costs hundreds to replace and is the size of a candy bar; the same goes for loose earbuds, a camera lens, or a collectible.
- Spare keys and garage remotes. These aren’t valuables — they’re access, which is a different conversation, and we have it in full in is it safe to give your house cleaner a key?
What is fine to leave exactly where it is
A 65-inch television is not small, not portable, and not hard to account for. Neither is the laptop on your desk, the art on the wall, the bike in the garage, the espresso machine, or the jewelry you are wearing. None of it needs moving, and moving it doesn’t buy you calm either — it buys you half an hour of work before a visit you booked specifically so you wouldn’t have to work.
And if you find yourself emptying the apartment into your car, the problem you are solving isn’t storage: it is that you haven’t verified the company yet, and hiding things is a poor substitute for that. The four checks that actually work — background checks, insurance, a written damage process, and pay-after-the-work billing — are in is it safe to hire a house cleaning service?, and every one of them is something a company either has in writing or does not.
Where a residential clean actually goes — and where it doesn’t
Almost all of the worry lives in one image: someone opening drawers. So it is worth knowing what the visit is actually scoped to do. Our residential cleaning in Miami is published as the maintenance routine — kitchen and bath reset, floors mopped + vacuumed, surfaces dusted, linens straightened, trash out — as a 2–3 hour visit with a 2-person team, 28 items verified by photo, starting at $189 on that page. Read the list again: it is a surface list. A closed drawer is not on it. What the crew’s hands actually do at each of those surfaces — and why closed drawers, mail, and paperwork stay closed — has its own article: will house cleaners go through my drawers or personal things?
The service where interiors do come into scope is the one you would guess: move-out cleaning, starting at $409, includes empty cabinet and drawer interiors — because by then the property is empty and that is precisely the job. Even on a deep clean, refrigerator and oven interiors are separately priced add-ons rather than default scope. The practical read: on an ordinary recurring visit, a closed drawer is already outside the work. That is why a drawer is enough for most of the short list, and a safe is only for the top of it.
One more thing follows from scope. The Terms say our team photographs work areas before and after the clean to document the service in your CleanCheck report — on eligible completed visits — and that those photos are not used in marketing without your separate permission. If something in a work area is something you would rather not have in a photograph at all — a document, a prescription label, a piece of mail — putting it away handles that too.
One spot, and always the same spot
The first thing any claims process asks is where the thing lived. Answer that in advance. Pick one spot and use it every time: a small safe, one lockable drawer, or a bag that leaves with you. The point isn’t the lock — it’s that “where would it be?” has an answer that doesn’t depend on your memory.
In Miami that looks different depending on where you live. In a Brickell or Miami Beach tower, remember that the building is not part of your plan: the front desk holds packages, not valuables, and between the elevator reservation and the desk check-in, more people know the visit is happening. In a Kendall or Palmetto Bay house, the equivalent is the obvious one: a bolted safe beats a jewelry box on a dresser. And if you keep a seasonal home that sits closed for months between visits, the answer changes category — the things you would genuinely hate to lose shouldn’t spend a whole summer in an empty house, no matter who holds the key.
The habit fails in exactly one way: the exception. The spot works until Friday night, when the ring goes into a coat pocket and the coat goes back on the hook. If you take something out of the spot, put it back before you go to sleep. The entire value of the system is that it has no exceptions to remember.
What we put in writing — and what putting things away doesn’t do
Our end of it is published, not promised on a call. From the Terms: every cleaner is background-checked, and we carry at least $2,000,000 in general liability coverage, with a certificate of insurance available on request — email bookings@jascleaning.com with “COI” in the subject line and the entity name. The value of that sentence isn’t the sentence: it’s that it sits on a page you can forward to your partner, your building, or your landlord without asking us for anything.
And now the honest part: putting things away is not coverage. The same Terms say so if you read to the end — if something is damaged during a clean, tell us within 24 hours at support@jascleaning.com, damage is documented in your CleanCheck and resolved through our insurance; and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid for the service giving rise to it. That is a real limit, published rather than mentioned on a call. A ring is worth more than a cleaning visit. Which is why the ring goes in the drawer — and why anything genuinely valuable belongs on your own homeowners or renters policy, a question for your insurance agent rather than your cleaning company.
FAQ
Is it rude to put my valuables away before a cleaning?
No. It is the standard advice reputable cleaning companies give their own customers, JAS included, and it says nothing about the people arriving — the same drawer gets used before a plumber, an AC tech, a photographer, or a party. You never owe anyone an explanation for it. And a company that takes offense when you mention it is telling you something worth hearing.
Do I need to put things away before every visit, or just the first one?
Every visit. The habit fails through exceptions, not through effort — the spot works right up until the one Friday the ring stays in a coat pocket — so the version that protects you is the boring one: the same spot, before every service visit, ten minutes while the coffee brews. The first time it feels like a chore; by the third visit it is simply where those things live, and there is nothing left to remember.
What about prescription medications?
One closed place, before any service visit — not the bathroom counter. Counters are exactly what a crew wipes, so a bottle left out gets picked up and set down somewhere, which is how a medication ends up "missing" without anyone doing anything wrong. Deciding where they live is also the version of this habit that matters most in a home with children or frequent visitors.
Should I tell the cleaners what I put away — or ask them to skip a room?
You never have to explain what you put away. But if you want a room, a desk, or a set of shelves left completely alone, say so when you book — that is a scope instruction, not an accusation, and it goes in the same booking note we already use for product preferences and your own vacuum. Written at booking beats mentioned at the door: the note reaches whoever is scheduled, and it is still there on the fifth visit.
The short version
Ten minutes, one spot, six categories: cash, jewelry, medications, documents, small high-value items, and spare keys. Everything else stays where it is. You are not doing it because you suspect anyone; you are doing it because a home where everything has a place never has to reconstruct a week of memory — and because a crew works faster with fewer precious things in the way.