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First impressions are lasting, but your last impression has to be just as impressive. Moving out of the house doesn’t mean you can leave it in any condition you want. Ethics, morals, and just good sense dictate that you leave your house in a pleasant condition for the next renters or buyers. Many landlords put the condition of deep cleaning the house before leaving, to get the security deposit back.
To achieve this feat, you need to prepare a properly thought move out cleaning checklist for yourself. You can also hire a cleaner for the job, and they too would need a checklist.
While deep cleaning the house before moving out is by no means a legal requirement, it’s just an expected custom and would benefit both the renters and the sellers.
If this is your first time taking full responsibility for moving out, the checklist might confuse you a little. Don’t worry, we are here to guide you.
The size of your checklist is directly proportional to the size of your property and at the level of tidiness, it is.
This might seem daunting, but it’s quite easy. All you need to do is follow our move out cleaning checklist as your starting point, and you are good to go:
First things first, empty the house of all your possessions. Everything that belongs to you needs to leave with you. From your furniture to that extra fixture you added in the living room, if you paid for it then you must take it.
Once the house is clear of all your possessions, it’s time to give that floor a good cleaning. If you regularly clean your house with a vacuum, this task would be easy and would hardly take any time. In addition to the floors, make sure to clean every nook and cranny in the house, including the insides of shelves.
Now that the house is cleared off and the floor is clean, you have to take care of all the surfaces. Use a surface cleaner and kitchen towels to wipe down doors, mirrors, kitchen counters, bathtubs, window panes, bookshelves, fireplace mantels, and even switchboards – with safety precautions, of course. Make sure there’s not a speck of dust left behind.
Deep cleaning means leaving no space dirty. Make sure to wipe down and dust off the inside of shelves and cabinets in your kitchen and pantry.
All the appliances that you are leaving behind need to be as shiny as the day you got them, or at the very least, clean. Make sure to wipe down the refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, and other appliances from inside and outside.
Once the majority of the house is clean, it’s time to enter the bathrooms and go elbow-deep in the cleaning mode. With proper cleaning supplies, scrub down the toilet, showers, sinks, and bathtubs thoroughly. If there’s any mold or mildew, have them eliminated before moving.
Once you have emptied all your clothes and accessories, give the closets a good wipe inside and outside. Don’t miss out on the hanging rods and the tricky unreachable corners. This will also give you a chance to make sure none of your accessories and valuables have found their way into the deep recesses of your closet.
If you want, you can vacuum the closet from the inside too.
This is easily one of the most overlooked parts of the move-out cleaning checklist, but here it is. Make sure that you remove all the nails and wall anchors you have hung during the time you lived in the house. However, you can leave them on if you don’t want them and your landlord has asked you to leave them there.
Removing nails and wall anchors leaves a gaping hole in the wall. It is your responsibility to patch them up and fill them in. If drywall is beyond your level of expertise, you can also hire a professional to fix it for you.
Patching up walls yourself often leaves a mark behind, that appears different from the rest of the wall. During the time you lived in a house, you might have left some marks and scratches behind. To fix that, you just need a small sample size of paint that matches the walls of your former house and a roller. Painting over marks and scratches would make your house appear as good as new.
Just cleaning the inside of the refrigerator is not enough. To make sure there is no food odor left behind, give it a good wipe with a disinfectant. Make sure there are no traces of food left behind in the fridge or the freezer.
Since you’d be eating till your last day in the house, don’t forget to leave before cleaning the oven and the stove. Give both of them a deep clean and remove all the food crumbs that accumulated under the oven and burners over the years.
Vinegar, baking soda, and warm water are some excellent cleaning supplies for the oven and stovetop.
Leave this one for the last. Once all your possessions and valuables are out the door, mop the floor once last time. You can add a cleaning solution to the water or even a simple vinegar that will disinfect the floor and give it a good shine.
You can deep clean the house at your convenience, but we suggest doing it once all your things are out of the house. This will make things a lot easier for you.
With all that deep cleaning to do, you don’t need to take the burden of moving on your shoulders. Trust the Bin It Movers and their expertise to make that process swift and efficient.