Interior window cleaning on Sanibel Island.

A lot of Sanibel homes sit closed for months at a stretch, and closed does not mean clean. A shut-up house on a barrier island builds a fine interior film — humidity, dust, and the salt that finds its way past every seal on the island — and it lands evenly across the inside of the glass, so it does not look like dirt so much as a room that has gone slightly flat.

Our interior window cleaning is a hand job: the room planned first, floors and furnishings protected, then every pane washed and squeegeed edge to edge with the sills and tracks detailed after. On the raised island homes, the interior face of the Gulf-facing view glass is usually the piece that has gone longest without attention, and it is the one that changes the room most.

Because the inside runs at a lighter rhythm than the exterior inside the same recurring plan, the practical move on a seasonal home is to time the interior visit to your arrival rather than the calendar. The exterior keeps running through the quiet months on its own; the interior is scheduled so you walk into it already done. More on the island in Sanibel.