Former high school cheerleading captain Rose Lorkowski (Academy-Award®-nominee Amy Adams) is a thirty-something single mother who cleans houses for a living. Wanting to send her trouble-making eight-year-old son Oscar to a private school, Rose decides to take her married lover's (Steve Zahn) advice and get into the "lucrative" business of crime scene cleanup. Rose convinces her disillusioned, underachieving sister Norah (Golden-Globe®-winner Emily Blunt) who is still living at home with their dad Joe (Academy-Award®-winner Alan Arkin), to join her in the enterprise, which she calls "Sunshine Cleaning." The sisters begin to find meaning in their function to "help" in some way in the aftermath of a loss, just as the job stirs up memories of their own mother's death. Their priorities and goals tested, Rose and Norah face hard challenges as they strive to improve their lives.