Move Out Cleaning

Regardless of whether you live in a home or an apartment, when it is time to move it is also time to do some heavy duty cleaning. Moving is already an extremely stressful situation, and the move out cleaning can only add stress just when you don't need it the most. Use the guidelines below as a handy dandy checklist when cleaning your home and reduce as much stress as possible in your life.

• Landlord. Regardless of whether you are renting a house or an apartment, a great place to start is by checking with your landlord. By asking your landlord what they want clean or what you are expected to have clean, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort. After all, why clean everything in a haphazard, slipshod manner and hope for the best, when you can actually know for certain what must be cleaned?
• Easy storage. One of the biggest contributing problems to your move-out cleaning is finding storage for all your stuff. Easy storage can be found in the form of plastic trash cans and trash bags. Using a 33 gallon trash can, you can store everything from clothes to stuffed animals. When you are finished using the garbage cans you can simply stack the garbage cans inside one another in your garage, which ends up taking up very little space.
• Walls. Walk through your home and make a note of any holes that your hanging pictures may have left. Use the appropriate fill putty for the type of walls you have in your home: wood filler for wood, and dry wall filler for other kinds of walls. Typically this is all that you will have to do for your walls, but it doesn't hurt to wash the walls quickly either. When washing the walls, use a mild paint-safe soap and clean rag. Work your way from the ceiling down to the floor. This will help ensure that you do not need to clean an area of your wall that you have already cleaned.
• Kitchen. When cleaning your kitchen there are a few areas you need to focus on. One by one, pull out your major appliances and clean behind them as well as the appliances themselves. Make sure that you also wipe down and clean the shelves and pantry in your kitchen.
• Bathroom. The bathroom is one of the few areas that you will need to ensure that you get from top to bottom. Clean around and inside the toilet. Make sure that you remove as much scum and other dirt as you possibly can from around the bathtub and underneath the sink and shelving.
• Living Areas. Make sure that you vacuum and dust every other major living area of your home. These living areas typically include the family room, dining area, and all bedrooms.