Five Tips to Help You with End-of-Lease Cleaning

They say that moving houses is second only to divorce and the death of a spouse when it comes to boosting stress levels. Moving out of a rental can be full of tedious processes: cleaning the house, packing up, throwing away old furniture, wrapping up legal terms with your landlord. How do you make sure you get your security deposit back? How can you pack a life up and store it into boxes?

Our answer is this: it doesn’t have to be that complicated. In this article, we have five tips that will show you end-of-lease cleaning doesn’t have to be a stressful experience. Read on to find out what we have in store for you!

Deep Cleaning is a must

Although you might be tempted to just do your regular cleaning and mop things up yourself, moving out kicks up the dirt gathered over the months or years that you’ve been living in your space. Deep cleaning allows you to get into places that you don’t regularly clean: the underside of the couch, under the refrigerator, behind the bed frame.

Deep cleaning is essential to making the place livable for someone else. Remember the state that your house or apartment was in when you moved in: try to make it just as clean or even cleaner for whoever is going to call this place home next. Deep cleaning also helps you in the long run, if the furniture is your own: you can have mattresses, sofas, and seat cushions deep-cleaned before you move. And then once you move into your new abode, you can rest assured that there are no bugs, mites, fungi, or mold living in your furniture. 

If the apartment or house is carpeted, make sure that you attend to all carpeted surfaces too. Pet dander, viruses, and mold all tend to get caught in carpeting. Deep cleaning won’t just draw the dirt out of the carpet, experts also usually treat it with an antiseptic spray that keeps mold and mildew from developing. 

Don’t forget small, intricate fixtures

It might seem like a small thing but landlords usually check the small, intricate fixtures. Yes, that light switch and doorknob could cost you your security deposit. Make sure that you fix any broken hinges, repaint any scuffed corners, and refurbish any damaged light switches. 

Clean out the shower knobs and drains too--if there are any problems, this could because you to lose your security deposit, or worse, have to pay for damages. One of the most often overlooked but most important items is bathroom tile. Check for anything chipped or stripped away and fill it in or go over it with tile lacquer. Intricate fixtures often look difficult to deal with but they’re actually nothing a trip to the hardware store can’t fix. 

Spackle!

Some rentals don’t allow you to drill holes into the wall, but if yours does, make sure that you spackle once you’ve taken down your photo frames and hanging artwork. Spackling is very urgent because the tiny holes can often accumulate dirt, making it difficult to spackle if a lot of time has elapsed. 

Spackling is also often part of the lease agreements if you are allowed to hang up art using nails. Don’t forget to set aside some time for this after you’ve done a preliminary vacuum of your rental. The closer to cleaning, the easier the spackling becomes. 

Bring in the professionals

A lot of people think that bringing professional cleaners is a waste of money because they could do it themselves. But in actuality, hiring professional cleaners could save you a lot of money. Most rentals get damaged during the end-of-lease cleaning period because homeowners try and DIY a deep clean. As a result, they end up working with chemicals and reagents that they aren’t familiar with like liquid sosa (lye) or muriatic acid.

This can cause damage to the unit or worse, injuries and burns. A common example is a parquet. A lot of homeowners vacuum parquet regularly. But in an attempt to deep clean, they might try and mop the parquet with liquid cleanser--a big mistake that can cause water damage to the wood, causing it to lift and ripple. 

Calling professional end-of-lease cleaners, for a consultation can help you minimize cost and boost efficiency. You also have the option of collaborating with the experts. You can ask them to only do certain tasks that are difficult or you’re not sure how to do.

Return all borrowed items - including the keys

 It’s kind of hard to forget something as big as a couch or a refrigerator but we can sometimes forget the little things. Try and make a list before you start cleaning all the things that you borrowed when you moved in: from the bathroom scrubber to the shower curtain to the keys. 

A lot of homeowners forget that turning over the keys is a major part of moving out of a home. This is crucial--especially if you’re moving overseas or somewhere really far and won’t be able to give your landlord the keys back after moving away. Although the new tenants will probably opt to change the locks, it’s still important that you give back the keys as a gesture of goodwill. 

Takeaways

End-of-lease cleaning is inevitable, but getting stressed over it is optional. There are a lot of different ways in which you can make the cleaning process easier and more efficient. From dealing with your space’s hardware to the actual items within the space that you need to pack up, it can be a long and winding process. 

Take things step by step and plan your every move: give yourself enough time to get everything done with help from experts. Skimping on something as major as moving homes isn’t something that you can skimp on in time, money, and effort. By getting professional help and following our five tips, you’re on your way to moving out and moving on to a new life, a better home.