Editorial standards

Start with the obvious

Houmse is a house cleaning service. We sell the thing we write about. When we tell you how to choose a cleaning company, we are not a neutral party, and you should read everything on this blog with that in mind.

We publish these standards because the alternative — a company blog that quietly presents marketing as guidance — is worse. Here is what we hold ourselves to, so you can check whether we are doing it.

How we source figures

• Primary sources first. Where a figure exists in a government dataset, a regulator's publication, an industry body's report, or a manufacturer's own documentation, we use that and link to it directly.
• We do not cite other blogs as sources for numbers. A price range that traces back through four articles to nobody is not a fact. If we cannot find where a number came from, we do not publish it.
• Ranges, not false precision. Cleaning prices vary by home size, condition, location and how recently the home was last cleaned professionally. Anyone publishing a single national average price is describing something that does not exist. We publish ranges and state what drives movement within them.
• Our own numbers are labelled as ours. If a figure comes from Houmse's own operations, we say so, and we say how many bookings it is based on. A number drawn from our own customers is not a market average and we will not present it as one.

What we do not publish

• Statistics we cannot trace to a source
• Operational claims we cannot support — cleaning counts, customer counts, or performance rates that have not been measured
• Competitor pricing presented as current unless we have checked it on the date stated
• Survey figures without the sample size and the date

If a claim on this site does not meet that bar, it is a mistake and we want to know about it.

Fact-checking and updates

Every article with pricing or statistical content carries a last fact-checked date, separate from its publication date. Pricing content is reviewed at least every six months and whenever we become aware of a material change.

When we update an article substantively — changing a figure, reversing a recommendation, correcting a claim — we note it at the foot of the page with the date and what changed. We do not silently edit and re-date.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

We correct errors of fact on the page itself rather than quietly removing them, with a dated note explaining what was wrong. For a significant error, the note stays permanently.

Report an error: info@houmse.com

Commercial disclosure

• Houmse sells residential cleaning services in Toronto and the GTA. Content on this site is written by us and is intended, in part, to bring us customers.
• We do not accept payment for placement, mentions, or rankings. No company has ever paid to appear or to rank in anything we publish.
• We run no affiliate links. We earn nothing if you click through to another company.
• Where we compare approaches — hiring a company against hiring an independent cleaner, for example — we commit to describing the case against us accurately. Our comparison content includes situations where a competitor's model, or no company at all, is the better choice, because that is true. See company vs independent cleaner and the 20-point scorecard.

The limits of what we publish

This blog is general information about residential cleaning. It is not legal, tax, insurance or health advice.

Where a question touches employment classification, tax treatment of household workers, insurance coverage, or health conditions, we describe the general shape of the issue and point you to a qualified professional. We do not give advice we are not qualified to give, even when it would be convenient for us.

Who writes this

Articles carry a named author with a linked profile. Where a piece has been reviewed by someone with direct operational experience — a cleaner, a trainer, an operations lead — we name that reviewer.

We do not publish unattributed content and we do not invent author personas. Currently the site's editorial byline is Mah Sadegh. Some drafts are prepared with AI assistance and then edited and fact-checked by a named author before publication.

Related: Authors · About · Blog