Cleaning in advance of house move. What not to miss?

GreyQueen

A lady I know retained her pre-marital home as a rental property. She always left it immaculate for the new tenants, with a bouquet of flowers, bottle of wine and a welcome card waiting for them when they moved in.

She reckoned the goodwill established thus for an outlay of £10 or so paid for itself many times over.

rosie383

Does anyone have any good ideas for keeping things clean once I do deep clean them?
All of my roll of drawer lining stuff ran out very quickly. I don't have any old rolls of wallpaper and I presume that newspaper would just leave more mess.
I'm honestly fed up cleaning things and thinking that's done, but because we still haven't flipping moved, I'm having to go back and clean them again and again. The end is hopefully in sight but I am fed up to the back teeth with cleaning and recleaning!

GreyQueen

((((rosie)))) I think a certain amount of re-cleaning is unavoidable, whatever you do, and you've gone the obvious things. The difference is that your final clean-through will be much faster and easier than it would have been if you hadn't done the deep cleaning beforehand.

Fluff, dust and grime filter into even closed and un-used rooms, so there's not a lot you can do to stop some of it coming back between now and moving day, it's not like you can vacuum pack your life, is it?

I know when I've helped other people move, there has inevitably been the shocking sight of the floor under the cooker for the first time in years, when the vac has already been packed and the hot water is off - very hard to clean off greasy dirt with just detergents without hot water to give it a kick.

Be kind to yourself, pet, and try not to stress it too much.

rosie383

Aw bless you Grey Queen. You always say the right things. I think it was the cooker floor and walls behind that just got to me! Again! I had already cleaned it in preparation for moving a few times over the past year.
That is all sparkling again. Oh, and the suggestions given in another thread about cleaning the cooker worked. Wiped the greasy sides over with hot, strong washing soda solution and then scrubbed with Astonish. Worked a treat.
DH went to the car boot and got rid of a lot of his erm carp! Thankfully he allowed me to take loads of his old computer study books to the tip. He sold a few at the car boot but realised that so many were out of date. Also got rid of a huge box of old cables, remote controls and other wired things so we are making progress.
I have also just properly kondoed my tubs cupboard and cleaned a zillion cobwebs from around the gas and electric meters at the back. It's really amazing how you think you have got rid of excess stuff, but revisit a cupboard and get shot of more of it.

Eenymeeny

rosie383 wrote: »

Does anyone have any good ideas for keeping things clean once I do deep clean them?
All of my roll of drawer lining stuff ran out very quickly. I don't have any old rolls of wallpaper and I presume that newspaper would just leave more mess.
I'm honestly fed up cleaning things and thinking that's done, but because we still haven't flipping moved, I'm having to go back and clean them again and again. The end is hopefully in sight but I am fed up to the back teeth with cleaning and recleaning!

It's an old trick that you probably know already but have you thought of topping your kitchen cabinets with cling film or newspaper? As GreyQueen says, you can't help dirt accumulating, but you can make it easier to clean the next time;) Non-stick liners on the bottom shelf of your oven and grill pan might help too.
Will read with interest, anything to reduce repeated cleaning interests me.
Sorry, but in a similar vein to the cooker, have you remembered behind/ under the washing machine? An engineer once told me that he was used to people asking him could they give it a quick clean while he had it pulled out of the units...

rosie383

Got the WM and fridge freezer out and cleaned under and behind them about a week ago.
I did cover the tops of kitchen cupboards with paper the last time I cleaned them so I'm not going to even bother to try to climb up and redo them. Good idea about the oven. I don't have any oven liners but I could use tin foil.
Took all the kick boards off the bottom of the kitchen cupboards and gave them a proper clean rather than just a quick wipe. I did my food cupboards weeks ago but stupidly didn't line them so have to redo them.

Squiggles2312

Last week I moved into a house when I viewed it, it was spotless (that was back in October).
I opened the front door for the first time to be confronted by the most disgusting smell ever!
The male in the house didn't know how to aim there was urine everywhere, the toilet brushes which were years old had been left and had been very used.
The kitchen stank, grease was so thick on the extractor fan its taken 3 days with industrial chemicals to remove the majority of it.
The oven was full of greasy fish which was rotten!
Under the broken washing machine and fridge and freezer was a thick layer of dirt I had to use a wallpaper scrapper to get most of it off!
The outside bins were full also and you could smell them in the house!
I honestly don't understand how someone can live and leave a property in such a mess. I have spent a total of 36 hours awake and cleaning.
Candles and Febrezze and I am slowly getting there :-)

TBagpuss

I wish I had moved into a house you were leaving, OP! I've always moved into houses which clearly had not been cleaned... The previous house I bought, the vendor's fridge had stopped working about 10 days before completion (I know this as the had been going to leave it , with me buying it)
Despite agreeing to remove it they instead dumped it in the garden, without emptying it of the food which was in there when it broke.

There was also a 4" deep heap of old, burnt food in the bottom of the oven, and no-where had been cleaned.

Mercifully I was staying with family and had always planned to do some redecorating before moving in, so giving it a really thorough clean before putting any of my stuff in the house wasn't sa bad as it could have been.
They also removed every single light-bulb and didn't leave any loo-roll.

They did not tell anyone they were moving and didn't set up a redirect for their post. Or leave a forwarding address.

Moving into the current house I found they clearly had not vacuumed after taking the furniture out, and the kitchen and bathroom were dirty, as were the inside of the kitchen cupboards.

They had replaced the light fittings in the living room (after stating hey were not going to - not a major issue as the ones they took were incredibly ugly, but they did a crappy job of it. Fortunately I had already booked an electrician in to do some other work the day after moving in and he very kindly tidied up the mess they had left (really long wires on overhead fittings etc)

Same seller had not arranged anything about their post and was upset when I told him that no, I wasn't going to store his incoming post and let him come back and collect it whenever he felt like it. (I told him I was willing to forward it to his estate agents for the fist month to give him time to set up redirection and notify people, or that I would redirect it if he gave me a forwarding address.

I's be the first to admit I am not the world's greatest or most house-proud housewife but I gave my house a thorough clean before I left, left the buyers a pack with useful local information, a box of chocolates and some wine and left loo roll and soap in the bathroom.

I didn't leave the bins empty as I moved 3 days before dustbin day and our bins were obnly collected fortnightly, but I did take a lot of stuff to the tip so that the bins were no more full than they would have been at that point in a normal week, and I made sure that the note I left included details of when the bins were due to be collected.

I had set up post redirection with royal mail but the new owners did send on the few items which slipped through the net, so I guess that they were also reasonable people and that they knew I had done what I could to make the move as easy as possible.