Cleaning in Targa, Marrakech

Targa occupies the north-west of Marrakech, between Guéliz, the route de Safi and Al Massar, set back from the main roads. It is a residential district settled since the 1990s and 2000s, with its schools, local shops, cafés and facilities. Quiet streets, pavements, street trees: people live here, they do not work here.

The building stock is that of the settled upper middle class: detached and semi-detached estate villas, two to three storeys, on medium plots with a small garden and a garage; medium-sized gated residences with a managing agent and parking; a few recent four- and five-storey blocks along the edges. The families are owner-occupiers, the children go to school in the district, and family gatherings are frequent.

That last point is not incidental: it is one of the districts of Marrakech best equipped with the salon marocain, the Moroccan salon, with made-to-measure banquettes running round a whole room, wool beldi rugs on the floor and spare mattresses brought out for guests.

As for floors: large-format porcelain tiling in the living rooms, marble on the stairs and sometimes in the living room, a tiled terrace on the roof and around the small garden, decorative zellige in the bathrooms and formal reception rooms, the occasional timber floor in the bedrooms of recent builds. The district holds no major technical trap; its difficulty lies elsewhere.

There is a very concrete fear in Marrakech, and Targa is its heartland: the fear of the rug or the sofa taken away by a contractor, returned in the same state, returned too late, or never returned at all. It is not a theoretical worry — it is what clients tell us before they even ask for a price.

Our rule is therefore simple and without exception: we take nothing. No collection, no drop-off, no workshop, no waiting time for the return. Sofas, mattresses and rugs are treated in your home, in front of you, and the house is back to its normal layout the same day.

One clarification, since the district is full of them: the made-to-measure Moroccan salon is not one of our services. We clean L-shaped and U-shaped sofas, mattresses and rugs, and we would rather write that here than have you find out standing in front of the banquette.

What working in the home involves in practice, because it is not the easy version of this trade:

• Protecting the floor before anything else. Sheeting over the working area, skirtings and wall corners protected, and particular attention to the stair marble when equipment goes upstairs.
• Managing waste water inside the house. Hot-water extraction recovers the dirty water as it goes; it is not tipped into the garden or down a street gully. The discharge point is agreed before we start. The method is described on the hot-water extraction method.
• Actual drying. Allow half a day to a full day, sometimes longer depending on the fabric, the thickness and the ventilation. Nothing is used or covered until it is completely dry: a seat handed back still damp starts to smell within two days. We ventilate to shorten that time, without promising it will be shorter.
• The order in which rooms are done, agreed with the family, so that an occupied house stays liveable during the work.

And what it rules out, frankly: a heavily soiled sofa does not become new again. A cover whose seams have gone, a foam that has collapsed, a fabric bleached by years of direct light cannot be recovered by cleaning. Some stains, discolouration or odours may remain: no 100% result is guaranteed, and we say so standing in front of the sofa, before we start.

The district's three lines of work, in the order families order them.

1. Sofas, mattresses and rugs, in the home. L-shaped sofa 550 MAD incl. VAT in the small size, 600 MAD in the large; U-shaped sofa 650 MAD or 750 MAD; single mattress 300 MAD, double 400 MAD — the guests' spare mattresses fit into the same visit; rugs 30 MAD/m², so 180 MAD for a 2 × 3 m rug. Textile minimum 400 MAD. Stains and odours you report trigger no automatic surcharge; for a wool beldi rug, a delicate fabric, the method is confirmed on photos. Sofa sizes are set out on sofa cleaning, and the local version on upholstery cleaning in Targa.
2. Villa housekeeping, by the day. 1,200 MAD incl. VAT per day for a villa, 800 MAD for a flat in a residence, one person included, +250 MAD per extra person per day. The day covers accessible dusting, vacuuming and mopping, the kitchen, the bathrooms and light terrace upkeep; windows, textiles and building residue are not part of it. The detail is on villa housekeeping.
3. Windows. 75 MAD incl. VAT per window up to 2 m², whole frame, both sides where they can be reached; 150 MAD per patio door up to 4 m²; minimum call-out charge 400 MAD. Villa windows in Targa almost all have ironwork: if the glass stays reachable behind the bars, it is +20%; if the bars stop us reaching it, we cannot do it. No dismantling: a fixed insect screen stays in place. That is covered on window cleaning in Targa.

After building work, the villa comes under post-construction cleaning: 20 MAD/m² incl. VAT on standard tiles, 30 MAD/m² on marble, zellige or wood, 7,500 MAD minimum for a villa, rubble removed before we come — see post-construction cleaning for a villa and post-construction cleaning in Targa.

Indicative amounts in dirhams including VAT, identical across Marrakech, confirmed after photos or a visit.

Access is as easy as it gets: quiet residential streets, parking in front of the house, vehicle at the door. Only two reservations, and both can be planned for.

• School drop-off and pick-up times. On the streets serving the district's schools, parking becomes impossible twice a day. A team arriving at that moment loses three quarters of an hour.
• Gated residences. Fob or entryphone, a slot to agree with the managing agent, lift car usually to be protected. Nothing blocking, provided notice has been given.

Targa's real constraint is domestic, and it is the most demanding of our districts: we are working in a house that is lived in, while it is being lived in. That imposes a discipline that appears on no competing quotation:

• carrying up two or three floors, with the stair marble protected as a matter of course — a scratch made bringing equipment up gets paid for twice;
• the family being there, and sometimes children or animals: products and equipment are never left unattended in an open room;
• respect for the home in the literal sense: we do not move a personal object without asking, we do not smoke, we do not eat in the house, and every piece of furniture goes back where it was before we leave;
• the day of the visit, chosen in the form from the next day onwards and confirmed with our team: tell us when someone can be there at the end of the job.

Water and electricity are essential, and here available without difficulty. The only point left to check is access to the roof terrace, usually served by a narrow internal staircase.

What we commit to in a house in Targa, in three checkable points.

1. The protocol is written down before the job: method, equipment, product, and the discharge point agreed for the waste water. On upholstery treated in the home, that last detail avoids most of the unpleasant surprises.
2. A test on a hidden area — a section of back against the wall, a corner of a rug — treated and dried before anything is rolled out, particularly on dyed fabrics and beldi wools, which can bleed.
3. The checklist walked through with you before we leave the house, item by item, with a free return on the point flagged if it is not up to standard. That is the moment when we establish together what has shifted and what has not.

EPUREVA is reachable seven days a week, works with certified products, covers over 195 clients and carries professional liability insurance. Tell us what you want treated — sofa sizes, number of mattresses, rug dimensions — and get a price. The other areas served are listed on the map of areas we serve.