What an empty apartment shows
An occupied home hides a lot of its edges. An empty one does not. Our cleaners work through the rooms in the order below, which only works once the belongings are out and the fridge and oven have been cleared.
1. Inside every cabinet and drawer
Kitchen cabinets opened one at a time, shelves wiped front to back, drawer fronts and the insides of the drawers. Bathroom cabinets the same way. Linen closets and hall closets, including the shelf above the rod. Crumbs, hair ties and the stray takeout menu behind a drawer come out and go in the trash.
2. Inside the fridge, the freezer and the oven
We wipe the fridge shelf by shelf, including the gaskets and the drawers, and do the freezer the same way once any ice is emptied. The oven is cleaned on the inside, with the door glass taken care of and the racks washed and set back in. The microwave is cleaned inside and out. The one condition on this step is that the appliances have to be emptied before we arrive, or we cannot get into them.
3. Bathrooms, top to bottom
Every surface gets attention, including the parts a weekly visit skips: the grout around the tub and shower, the shower glass when there is any, behind the toilet, and the floor behind the base. The vanity and the medicine cabinet are cleaned inside and out, with the shelves wiped. The mirror and the light fixture are reached from the floor with an extendable duster, and the fan cover gets a wipe. The floor comes last.
4. Closets, shelves and rods
Each closet gets the shelf above the rod wiped the full width, the rod itself wiped, the floor swept and washed, and the walls inside the closet checked for scuffs and marks that come off with a wipe. A built-in with shelves gets each shelf.
5. Walls and doors: spot-cleaning scuffs and marks
Scuffs and smudges that come off with a damp sponge, we take off. Painting, patching holes, filling nail holes, and anything with paint touch-up are repairs, not cleaning. We flag anything that needs a brush and leave it to the landlord or a painter.
6. Windows from the inside, sills, tracks and blinds
Inside glass on every window, the sill wiped front and back, the tracks vacuumed and wiped out, and blinds wiped slat by slat where they come down with a cloth. We do not clean the outside of windows above the ground floor, and we do not lean out of a window.
7. Floors, last, room by room toward the door
Vacuumed first, including along baseboards and the corners. Hard floors mopped. Carpet vacuumed; carpet shampooing is a different trade and belongs to a shampoo and extraction service. We finish at the door the keys will hand back to and work the room out behind us.
| Spot | What usually gets missed | What the clean covers |
|---|---|---|
| Inside kitchen cabinets | Crumbs and the sticky ring under a bottle | Each shelf wiped front to back |
| Inside the oven | Baked-on spill at the back | Cleaned inside, racks washed and reset |
| Fridge gaskets | Crumbs and spills in the folds | Wiped out section by section |
| Behind the toilet | Dust and splash | Reached and washed |
| Closet shelf above the rod | Dust and the odd forgotten hanger | Wiped the full width |
| Window tracks | Dirt and old leaves | Vacuumed and wiped out |
| Door frames and switch plates | Finger marks and dust lines | Wiped top to bottom |
| Baseboards | A season of hair and dust | Wiped along each wall |
If more than a few of these rows describe your place, this is the clean to book.
When move-out cleaning fits, and when other work comes first
When this is the right page
The furniture is out, or will be out before we come. The appliances have been emptied. The keys go back on a date you already know. You want every surface in the empty rooms cleaned, and you do not want to spend the last three days of the move on your hands and knees.
When another service fits
If you still live in the place and the move is weeks away, a deep clean while you still live there is a better starting point. You can live in it until the move and we can get the inside of the appliances and the cabinets when the day comes. Repairs, painting, patching and hauling left-behind furniture are different trades and come before, not during, the clean; for a stand-alone visit without a move attached, see a one-time visit. For the apartment or house you are arriving at, see cleaning a new place before the boxes.
If the empty place is in a walk-up, a courtyard building or a tower, the building affects how we get in on move-out day: service elevator, loading dock, how long the trash chute stays open. Say so on the call.
An empty unit opens up what a lived-in home keeps hidden, and the order those spots get touched shapes the day.
The order of a move-out clean
Working through the rooms once the furniture is out and the appliances have been emptied.
Cabinets and drawers inside
Each one opened; shelves and drawer fronts wiped; crumbs come out and go in the trash.
Fridge, freezer and oven
Shelves out, gaskets wiped, racks washed.
Bathrooms top to bottom
Tub, toilet and vanity, plus the grout, shower glass and the spot behind the toilet.
Closets, shelves and rods
The shelf above the rod, the rod itself, the closet floor swept and washed.
Windows from the inside
Glass, sills, tracks and blinds.
Floors last, toward the door
Vacuumed, then mopped on hard floor. Room by room out of the apartment.
What the visit covers in an empty unit
A move-out clean is the full catch-up in an empty apartment, condo or house. Every cabinet and drawer, the inside of the oven and fridge, the bathrooms top to bottom, closets and built-ins, inside windows and tracks, and floors last. We go over products on the call, including anything the landlord or the condo rules say to use or avoid. We do not patch, paint or caulk, and we do not haul away furniture or boxes. If you have old cleaning products you cannot pack, see old cleaning products you cannot pack for how to get rid of them.
From your call to the walk-through
- You call us with the address, the day the furniture leaves, the day the keys go back and anything the lease or condo rules say.
- We go over products and anything the building needs us to know.
- You get a price for the visit and decide.
- The cleaning happens, and we walk the empty rooms with you at the end if you can be there.
Chicago renters, the lease and the end of a tenancy
A move-out in Chicago usually means a rental, and the rental usually sits under the City's Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance. A majority of Chicago households rent: renters occupy 626,193 of Chicago's 1,160,205 occupied homes, about 54 percent, and about 42 percent of renter households moved into their home in 2020 or later. About 14 percent of Chicagoans had moved in the past year. The City's Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance applies to every rental agreement for a dwelling unit in Chicago, subject only to the exclusions in section 5-12-020, and the City's housing department lists the rights the ordinance covers, among them the tenant's general responsibilities, the landlord's right of access, security deposits and prepaid rent. The ordinance also requires the landlord to give the tenant a summary of it, attached to each written lease and lease renewal. Read that summary and the City's RLTO page for what the ordinance says about deposits in your tenancy; we will not read it for you and will not tell you what your landlord may or may not do. Our part is leaving the place clean, and we cannot promise anything about a deposit. Sellers rather than renters have a different reader on the other side of the clean: a buyer walking through an empty house.
The summary attached to a Chicago lease is where to read before anyone promises what happens to a deposit.