October 1, 2026
A large built-in refrigerator is the biggest single stretch of metal in most kitchens. In this Seattle home it had two full-height stainless doors set into wood cabinetry, with a stainless panel above them. From a few steps away it looked fine. Up close, the lower half of both doors told a different story. This is how it was handled during a regular cleaning visit, photo by photo.
Before. The marks start around waist height and run down toward the floor: handprints, fingertip smudges, small drip marks. That is the zone people push with a hip or a free hand when their other hand is full.
The streaks are the second layer. Look past the handprints and there are curved wipe lines across the steel. They come from earlier attempts to clean the doors with a damp cloth. Water plus whatever was on the cloth dries on stainless as a film, and each circular pass leaves its own arc.
The method. Brushed stainless has a direction, a fine grain you can see if you look at the door at an angle. The cleaner applied a stainless steel cleaner and worked it in straight strokes that follow that grain, top to bottom, one door at a time. Circles are what created the streaks in the first place, so there were none. Each door was then dried right away with a dry microfiber cloth, again along the grain, before the product could set.
Handles and edges on their own. The long bar handles, with their small copper accent bands, get touched more than any other part of the fridge. They were cleaned separately, end to end, along with the door edges and the narrow gap where the two doors meet. Skipping them is how a clean door picks up fresh prints within a day.
After. An even finish from top to bottom, with the kitchen reflected cleanly in the steel and no prints below the handles.
Stainless appliance fronts are on the kitchen checklist of every regular visit. Once the old film is gone, keeping the doors like this takes a few minutes each time instead of a long session. Recurring cleaning is the core of JenyClean’s business, about 70% of revenue, and small, repeatable details like these are what a regular plan is built on.
If the stainless in your kitchen never quite looks clean, we can add it to a regular plan. Book online to schedule house cleaning in Seattle.