Window cleaning is simple in principle and frustrating in practice, and North Texas makes it worse in three specific ways: the water is hard, the dust is constant, and from May to October the sun dries a wet window before you've finished wiping it. Here's how we work around all three.
Start with the dry work. Before any water touches the glass, the frame, sill and track get brushed and vacuumed. This is the step almost everyone skips and it's the reason home window cleaning ends in mud: the grit sitting in the track and along the bottom of the frame gets picked up by the wet cloth and dragged across the glass. Clear it first.
Use a squeegee, not paper towels. Paper towels and newspaper leave lint and push dirty water around; a squeegee removes it. Wet the glass with a solution of water and a small amount of dish soap — that's genuinely all you need, and it's what most professionals use — then pull the squeegee across in overlapping strokes, wiping the blade on a clean cloth after each pass. Finish by running a dry microfibre cloth along the edges where the squeegee can't reach.
Work in the shade, or early. This is the Texas-specific one. Direct sun on a window in July will dry the cleaning solution before the squeegee gets to it, and dried solution is what a streak is. Do the shaded side of the house first and follow the shade around, or do the whole job early in the morning. If you can't avoid sun, work in smaller sections so the glass never dries on its own.
Hard-water spots need more than soap. If your exterior glass has cloudy white spotting that won't wipe off, that's mineral deposit from sprinklers hitting the window, and it's very common around here. Soap won't touch it. A solution of white vinegar and water left on the glass for a couple of minutes will dissolve light spotting; heavy, etched-in spotting sometimes needs a dedicated mineral remover and a fair amount of elbow grease. And adjust the sprinkler head so it stops hitting the glass, or it'll be back in a month.
Don't forget the screens. A clean window behind a dirty screen still looks dirty. Pop the screens out, lay them flat, rinse them with a hose, scrub gently with soapy water and a soft brush, rinse again and let them dry completely before they go back in.
Inside glass has its own problem, which is fingerprints and the haze that builds up from cooking and from the air conditioning running all summer. The same soap-and-squeegee method works, but do the inside on a different day than the outside if you can, or at least do one side completely before starting the other, so you can tell which side a remaining streak is on.
If you'd rather not spend a Saturday on a ladder, we clean interior and exterior windows across Plano and the DFW area, and we do the sills, tracks and screens as part of the job rather than as an extra. Book it on its own or add it to a standard or deep clean. Call or text (469) 835-4937 or (469) 835-5293 for a free estimate.