Move In and Move Out Cleaning
This is the one cleaning job somebody else grades. A landlord, a property manager, or a buyer's agent walks the empty rooms with a checklist and decides whether it passed. Empty is also the hard part of it. With the furniture gone there is nothing to clean around and nothing to hide behind, so the dust line the dresser left and the grease fan behind the range are both sitting there in plain sight.
$40 an hour, 1 hour minimum. Every visit is billed at least one full hour even if the work takes thirty minutes. Why, and how to get the most out of it.
What the job involves
- Every interior gets opened. Cabinets and drawers wiped out, closet shelves and rods, the oven and its racks, the fridge and freezer down to the shelves and the door gaskets. In a house somebody still lives in, those stay shut. In an empty one they are most of the job.
- The shadows come out. The strip of wall a headboard covered, the pale rectangle where a rug sat, the floor under the fridge, the ring a couch leg pressed into the carpet. A walkthrough happens in an empty room, and an empty room shows all of that at eye level.
- Slider tracks, window sills, and blinds. Blinds are the slowest thing in the house for their size, slat by slat by hand, and a checklist line that says clean the window coverings can add an hour by itself. Worth knowing before you agree to that line.
- Front Range water leaves mineral scale on shower glass and chrome, and it does not wipe off. It comes off with an acid cleaner and dwell time. Where it has sat for years the glass underneath is etched and scrubbing will not bring it back. I will tell you which of those two you have instead of billing hours against the second one.
- Move in is the same rooms with a different point. Nothing is being graded. What matters is what your hands and your food touch before the truck arrives: cabinet and drawer interiors, the fridge, the toilet and the shower, switches, handles, floors. The window for it is the gap between closing and the movers.
- Order of operations runs against your key handoff. Top to bottom, back of the house toward the door, floors last with the edges and corners done by hand, so nothing finished gets walked back through. I want to be out before the walkthrough, not working during it.
What changes the price
The biggest swing is whether the place is actually empty. A clean booked while the truck is still loading gets paid for twice, because whatever moves out afterward leaves a mark. Past that it is counts, not square footage: cabinet and drawer interiors, bathrooms, square feet of shower glass, blinds. Oven condition is its own line, and so is a fridge that has to be pulled out and cleaned behind. A long property manager checklist raises the number because it adds items I would otherwise leave alone. Power or water already shut off means the day is lost, so confirm that before you book anybody.
What people usually get wrong
People think the clean is what decides the deposit. It is one part of it. Deductions usually come off damage and disposal: nail holes, a gouged floor, a dead bulb, the shelf left in the garage. None of that gets fixed by scrubbing harder, and none of it is mine. Get the checklist from your property manager before you hire anyone and read what it asks for, because on most of them the cleaning items are a short section and the rest is condition.
Send me this and I can quote it without coming out
There is no trip charge either way, but a remote quote is faster for both of us and it costs you nothing to try.
- The move out checklist from your landlord or property manager, and the hour the keys are due.
- The oven with the door open and the racks in, plus the stovetop and the underside of the range hood.
- The fridge with both doors open, and the gap beside it if it has already been pulled out.
- One close shot per bathroom of the shower glass or the tub surround, so I can see how old the scale is.
- A wide kitchen shot showing every cabinet and drawer front, and a note on whether the power and water stay on.
When I am the wrong call
Volume against a hard deadline is where a crew beats me, and I will say that on the phone. If the keys are due tomorrow at noon and nobody has touched a four bedroom yet, three people finish it and one person does not. Call a company with a crew. Same answer if your lease demands a receipt from a carpet cleaning company. I cannot produce that document, so hire them for the carpet and me for the rest.