We clean inside every cabinet and drawer

We clean high first and floors last

A move out clean happens in a house with nothing left in it, and that changes the job. With the furniture gone you can see the dust line where a dresser stood and the scuffs where a couch rubbed the wall. We start up high, on fan blades and the tops of door frames, because anything we knock loose lands on the counters and floors. If the floors get done first, they get done twice.

The kitchen takes the most time. Cabinets and drawers get wiped inside and out, and so do the pantry shelves. The refrigerator and the oven get cleaned inside, because that is where a property manager opens the door and looks. Grease on the range hood and the cabinet doors beside the stove takes a degreaser and a second pass. One wipe only spreads it into a thin film that dries sticky. The sink and faucet come last, so they are the brightest thing in the room when you walk in.

Bathrooms follow the same order. The fan cover and the light come first, then the mirror and counters, then the tub or shower. The toilet gets cleaned all the way down to the base and the floor behind it, a spot nobody sees until the house is empty. Floors are always last. We wipe baseboards by hand before we vacuum, and we mop hard floors backing out of each room toward the door. One customer wrote that the crew "really went through their checklist."

• Fan blades and light fixtures dusted first
• Inside kitchen cabinets and drawers wiped out
• Inside the refrigerator and the oven
• Tub or shower scrubbed for soap scum
• Baseboards wiped by hand, then floors last

Landlords check the spots tenants skip

When you hand back the keys on a rental, someone walks through with a checklist, and whatever they write down can come out of your deposit. They do not just glance at the living room from the doorway. They open the oven, run a finger across the top of the refrigerator, look under the bathroom sink and check the window tracks. A tired person skips those spots on the last night in the house, so that is where we spend the most time.

If your lease came with a move out checklist, have it ready when you call. That list is what the house gets measured against. Some property managers ask for things a normal clean would not cover, like the inside of light globes or every slat on the blinds. Tell us what is on it and we add those spots to the job. Knowing up front means it gets done while we are there, instead of showing up as a charge after you have moved.

Cleaning has limits, and it helps to know them before the walkthrough. Nail holes and a burn in the carpet are repairs, and no amount of scrubbing changes that. A clean does take care of the work a landlord would otherwise pay someone to do and bill back to you. That means grease on the stove and soap scum in the tub. It means dust on top of the cabinets and the grime packed into the refrigerator door seal.

Pollen and red clay get into everything

Every spring the pine pollen in the Triangle turns cars and porches yellow green, and it does not stay outside. It sifts through window screens and settles in the tracks and on the sills. In a house that sat empty for a while, it builds up with nobody there to wipe it away. We vacuum the tracks before we wipe them. Wiping first turns dry pollen into a yellow paste that packs into the corners of the track.

The soil around here is red clay, and it comes into the house on shoes and on the wheels of moving dollies. By move out day it is often ground into the carpet between the front door and the stairs. Vacuuming lifts the loose dirt. A clay stain that has been walked into the fibers needs a real carpet cleaning, which we also do. Ask about it when you book, because a stained carpet is an easy thing for a landlord to charge for.

A lot of the housing around Morrisville is newer townhomes and apartment communities. Many of them still have the flat paint the builder put on the walls. Flat paint does not like scrubbing. Rub a scuff too hard and you leave a shiny patch that looks worse than the mark did. We try a small spot first and stop if the paint starts to polish. We will tell you which marks need a touch up of paint instead of more cleaning.

We clean new homes before furniture arrives

The house you are moving into was cleaned by whoever left it, or by nobody. Either way, you do not know what is on the shelves where your dishes are about to go. A move in clean follows the same order as a move out, high to low. It puts more time into the places you will use first: the kitchen cabinets, the inside of the refrigerator, the bathrooms and the closets.

Houses that sit empty through a North Carolina summer often smell musty by the time the new owner gets the keys. With the air conditioning off or set high, the humidity climbs, and mildew starts in the shower grout and around the bathroom fan. Homes built over a crawl space, which is common around here, can pull damp air up from underneath. We clean the mildew off and wipe out the cabinets under the sinks, where a slow drip shows up first. If we see signs of a leak, we tell you so you can call a plumber before you unpack.

Timing matters more on a move in than on any other clean. The gap between getting the keys and the moving truck is often short. We work Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, so if your truck is coming on a Saturday, book the clean for that Friday or earlier. Once boxes are stacked in the kitchen and beds are set up, the job gets slower. We end up working around your things instead of reaching every corner.