We clean inside every cabinet and drawer

An empty home shows every missed spot

A move out clean happens after the furniture is gone, and that changes the job. Every spot a couch or a bed covered is now out in the open. You see the dust line along the baseboard and the scuffs low on the wall where a chair rubbed. In an empty room the light hits everything, so a missed spot is the first thing the next person notices when they walk in.

The work goes inside everything that opens. Kitchen cabinets and drawers get the crumbs vacuumed out and every shelf wiped. The tops of the upper cabinets get wiped too, since grease and dust sit up there out of sight. Bathroom vanities get the same treatment. If the oven and refrigerator stay with the house, we clean them inside as well, because a buyer or a landlord will open both.

Move in cleaning is the same job from the other side. The last owner or tenant may have wiped the counters on the way out. The inside of the cabinets usually still holds their crumbs and shelf dust. You are about to put your plates and your food in there. The best time for it is before your boxes arrive, while every shelf is still empty and easy to reach.

• Cabinets and drawers wiped inside and out
• Oven and refrigerator cleaned inside if they stay
• Baseboards and door frames wiped by hand
• Hard water scale taken off fixtures
• Floors vacuumed and mopped as the last step

The floors always get cleaned last

We start high in every room and work down, because dust falls. Ceiling fan blades come first. A fan that ran all summer has a gray layer on top of each blade. That dust drops onto everything below the moment you touch it. After the fans we wipe the air vents and light fixtures, then the tops of the door frames and the window sills.

Next we clean everything at counter height. We clean inside the cabinets before we wipe the counters, so crumbs swept out of a drawer land on a counter that is still dirty. The kitchen and bathrooms take the longest, since that is where grease and soap scum build up. Then we wipe the baseboards and door frames, where feet and hands leave marks every day.

The floors are the last job in the house. We vacuum the bedroom carpet, then vacuum and mop the tile. We finish at the front door so nobody walks across a clean floor. When floors get mopped first and the fans get dusted after, that dust lands on damp tile and dries there as a film. The floor looks clean from the doorway and feels gritty under bare feet.

Hard water and desert dust add steps

Tap water around Gilbert is hard, and it leaves a white crust wherever it dries. You see it on shower glass and around the base of every faucet. In a home that has been lived in for a while, that scale builds up in layers. Regular bathroom spray barely touches it, so we use a descaler and let it sit long enough to soften the crust before we scrub.

Skip that step and it shows fast. A shower door wiped with plain cleaner looks fine while it is wet. Once it dries, the same cloudy haze is back. Hard water also leaves rings inside toilet bowls and white crust on the sink faucets. Some glass that went years without care is etched, and we will tell you when a spot is in the glass rather than on it.

Dust is the other local problem. Summer dust storms push fine grit through the gaps around windows and doors. It packs into the window tracks and onto the slats of the blinds. We vacuum the tracks out before we wipe them, because a wet cloth turns that grit into mud. In a house that sat closed up through the heat, the water that sits in each drain can dry up and let a sewer smell in. We run water in every drain before we leave.

Tile floors and textured walls hold dirt

Most homes around Gilbert are wood frame houses with stucco on the outside, built on a concrete slab. Inside, the main rooms usually have large ceramic or porcelain tile. The grout lines between those tiles hold dirt that a quick mop just pushes around. On a move out we scrub the grout in the kitchen and bathrooms, where spills and soap build up the most.

The walls in most of these homes have a knockdown texture, a sprayed pattern with small raised peaks. Those peaks catch scuffs and handprints, and a rough scrub pad can rub a shiny spot into flat paint. We spot clean the walls with a soft cloth and a mild cleaner, and we test a hidden area first. Marks that go into the paint, like a gouge from a moving dolly, need a painter, and we will point them out to you.

Many of these homes have faux wood blinds or plantation shutters, and every slat holds its own strip of dust. We wipe each slat on both sides, which takes time, and it is one of the first places a landlord runs a finger. Two story homes add a staircase. The rail gets gripped every day, and the spindles below it collect dust that nobody sees until the furniture is gone.

Landlords and buyers check the same spots

If you rent, the move out clean has a lot to do with how the walkthrough goes. A property manager will open the oven and look under the bathroom sinks. They check the shower glass and the window tracks, because those are the spots tenants skip. Cleaning charges usually come from those places, and we clean each of them before you hand over the keys.

If you are selling, the buyers usually walk through the empty house one last time before closing. They open drawers and cabinets, because they are picturing their own things inside. Finding crumbs in a drawer or a dusty shower at that visit starts the new owners off annoyed. That can turn into a call to your agent. We clean for that last visit the same way we clean for a landlord.

Book the clean for after the last load leaves the house. If we clean while boxes are still stacked in a room, the floor under them never gets done. Movers also track dirt in on their last trips through the front door. Tell us when the truck is due and when the keys change hands, and we will plan the clean for the time between.