We clean inside every cabinet and appliance

We work from the ceiling down

A move out cleaning starts once the last box is out the door. With the furniture gone, we can reach spots a regular visit never gets to. That means the wall where the headboard sat and the floor where the couch was. We work each room from the top down. Dust knocked off a ceiling fan or a door frame falls onto a floor we have not cleaned yet, so nothing gets cleaned twice.

The kitchen takes the longest in an empty house. Every cabinet and drawer gets wiped inside, because crumbs and spilled spices collect in the back corners. The oven and the fridge get cleaned inside as well. If the fridge sits on wheels, we roll it out and clean the floor and wall behind it. Grease on the range hood and on the cabinet tops above the stove comes off with a degreaser, not a dry rag.

Bathrooms come after the kitchen. Soap scum on a tub and water spots on shower glass need time to soak before they wipe off. We clean each toilet all the way down to the base, where it sits on the floor, since that is where the smell hides. Floors are the final step in every room. We vacuum the edges and the closets first, then mop hard floors on the way out so no one walks across them wet.

• Inside of every cabinet and drawer wiped
• Oven and fridge cleaned inside and out
• Baseboards and door frames wiped by hand
• Bathrooms scrubbed, toilets down to the base
• Floors vacuumed and mopped as the last step

Tennessee humidity makes an empty house musty

Shut a house up through a Middle Tennessee summer and it turns stale fast. Owners often shut the air off, or set it high, to save money between moves. Humidity builds inside, and the smell settles into carpet and closets. In a warm, damp house, mopped floors dry slowly and streak, and mildew starts to show on bathroom grout. It helps to leave the air conditioning running on the day of the cleaning.

Many homes around College Grove and Franklin sit on crawl spaces, from older brick ranch houses to newer two-story homes in the subdivisions. A crawl space pulls damp air up through the floor, so a house left empty can smell musty even when it looks clean. We cannot fix a crawl space, but we can make sure the smell is not coming from the rooms above it. That means cleaning out the drains and drying the cabinets under every sink.

Spring adds pollen to the job. It coats window sills and porch screens in yellow dust, and it blows inside every time the movers prop the front door open. In a wet week, clay from the yard gets tracked in on boots and dolly wheels. It dries in the seams of hardwood and vinyl plank floors. That is why the entry and the window tracks get cleaned last, after the moving truck has pulled away for good.

We clean before your boxes come in

Passing the closing walkthrough does not mean a house is clean. Sellers clean in a hurry while they pack, and a vacant house collects dust on every flat surface. A move in cleaning happens while the cabinets and closets are still empty. It is the easiest time to do it, with nothing to move out of the way. Once your dishes and clothes go in, those shelves rarely get wiped again.

For a move in, we spend extra time on the things your hands touch first. Door handles and light switches get wiped one at a time, since the last family touched them every day. The inside of the dishwasher and the microwave get cleaned too. If a front-load washer stays with the house, we wipe the rubber seal inside the door, where damp lint and mildew collect.

Homes that sat empty on the market have their own mess. Stink bugs and ladybugs crawl into Tennessee homes in the fall, and the dead ones collect on window sills and inside ceiling light covers. Spiders build webs in closet corners and along the garage ceiling. We take the light covers down to empty them, and we sweep the webs out of corners before the floors get done.

Cleaning works best after the movers leave

The order of move day matters. If we clean while boxes are still going out, the movers track dirt across floors we just mopped. The door also stays propped open, and bugs and leaves blow in. The best time is after the truck leaves and before the keys change hands. If painters or a handyman are coming to patch walls, have them finish first. Sanding drywall throws fine dust over every surface in the room.

Keep the power and water on until the cleaning is done. Without hot water, soap scum and kitchen grease just smear around. Without power, the closets and the inside of the oven are too dark to see. A fridge left unplugged with the door shut also grows mold, and that smell takes real work to get out. If utilities shut off at closing, set the cutoff for after the cleaning day.

A finished move out cleaning looks like a house nobody has lived in yet. Cabinet shelves are bare and dry. The sinks shine without water spots, and the stovetop has no burned rings around the burners. Along the baseboards there is no gray line of dust where a vacuum missed. A landlord or buyer walking through should find nothing to write down, and the next family can put dishes away without wiping first.