Clean Windows Like a Pro With Straight Pulls and a Detailed Top Edge

The Problem

Window cleaning with spray and paper towels pushes dirt around and leaves lint and streaks that show the moment the sun hits the glass. The pro result comes from a squeegee — but a squeegee dragged casually over a wet pane leaves runs and lines that look worse than the paper towels did.

The Technique

A professional window washer's teach-you-to-skip-hiring-me version:

1. Load a window mop (a scrubber sleeve on a T-bar) with soapy water and scrub the glass — aggressively, every square inch. Stubborn spots get a white scrub pad.
2. Detail the top: run a dry strip along the top edge of the pane. This gives the squeegee a dry starting zone so it doesn't hydroplane.
3. Set the squeegee in the dry strip and pull straight down in one smooth stroke.
4. Re-dry the top of the next lane if needed, wipe your squeegee blade dry, and pull again — overlapping the previous stroke. The overlap is the whole secret: each pass wipes the wet edge the last one left, so no line of water survives to dry into a streak.
5. Detail the bottom edge and sills with a towel at the end.

Faster pro variants exist — the fanning S-stroke among them — but overlapping straight pulls produce the same streak-free glass at beginner speed.