Did you clean your old house before you moved out?

Each time we have moved I have paid a cleaning company to come in and clean all paintwork, cupboards, windows, carpets etc - well worth the expense

DD has just moved out of military quarters to their own home - they are 'marched out' (inspected) and everything has to be spotless. Sadly their new home wasn't - greasy oven and dirty work surfaces and so on. It's a shame people don't have the same standards but there we are!

The reality of buying and selling property is that if you're in a chain, you wait outside the house you are moving into until the vendor receives a call from his/her solicitor to say that your money has been received in his/her account. That means you move in as soon as the vendor moves out and there's bound to be areas of the property that are not cleaned to satisfaction. When I moved five years ago I entered the house as the vendor left and as I opened the fridge and freezer doors to do what I thought was the most important thing and protect my food, I saw that she had forgotten to empty the fridge - much more of a problem than a few cobwebs for me, especially as she asked me to keep it for her until she could return!

My house was cleaned thoroughly when I moved and I let it to a large family with a big dog. Three years later when they moved out I didn't bother with an inspection from the letting agent as I knew the house would be spotless, and it was! I moved straight back in. It was as it should have been and they had even decorated a couple of rooms which looked better than when I left them. Not all tenants a filthy.

I rented a property around 10 years ago,and when i left i received a lovely letter from the landlord thanking me for leaving the house spotless.
That was a lovely gesture,but i coudn`t help but wonder how previous tenants left it.
I couldn`t believe it when i bumped into the landlord and he showed me some photos of the house left by previous tenants ,OMG i was truely shocked.
My attitude is leave a property as you want to find one.

I polished and scrubbed our seven bedroom house when we moved,with the help of friends and relatives as we had teenage boy Foster children and heaven only knows what they might have left! One house we moved into,on Christmas eve,I snow and six months pregnant had no light bulbs or curtain rails,but even worse,the electricity sockets had never been upgraded and they were the old three pin round ones so we couldn't use anything. Luckily my mother in law lived opposite and we were able to stay with her until we were able to rewire the house.

I clean every house I leave, leave a moving in card and a bottle of wine, but every one I've got have been disgusting. When I bought this bungalow it had an 80's fryer built into the hob( weird I know) which I thought was a griddle until I lifted to to find rancid oil in it. The bungalow had been empty for over a year, it was disgusting.
The last one had that much grease the kitchen walls,cupboards, light switches, etc were all yellow. The toilets were replaced the first week....I'd borrowed the keys from the estate agent for my plumber to check the leaking overflow and he couldn't get into loft for kids toys and rubbish. It amazes me how they had the cheek to leave it all, it filled 2 skips and they were billed for it.
I would be embarrassed leaving a dirty house, but on seeing some I've moved into, some people just don't care.

Always have left a clean house. But when I moved into this council house it was filthy. The lady who lived in it before me had dementia so I didn't expect it to very clean but 15 years later I still have not been able to get rid of the limescale from the toilet. I have tried everything on the market and every hint and tip, but nothing works. Have asked for a new toilet and bath but so far have had no response from the council, even though the toilet has leaked 5 times and flooded the place.

Amazing......everyone on here leaves the home they are moving from absolutely spotless -and equally everyone on here has found the place they are moving to absolutely filthy!!!!

Obviously, none on here have moved into the homes of others on here!!!!!

'Doesn't everyone want to give a good clean to their new home when they move in.??

Everytime I sold a house, I cleaned every inch from top to bottom, hoovering or mopping myself right out of the front door.

Everytime I moved into a new house, it was filthy ?

I was under the impression that when selling property (rather than vacating rented property) there was a clause in the legal documentation to the effect that it had to be free of all movable items and clean. And yes, I would expect 'clean' to mean no grime or cobwebs, and vacuumed carpets. However, the reality of house moving is that one sits in one's property on the day of departure until the phone call comes from the solicitor to say that the purchaser's money has arrived in his/her bank and then it's a question of getting out while the purchasers wait outside to come in - so realistically there is always going to be a need for some level of cleaning. When I last moved five years ago, I walked into house to find the fridge still full of the vendor's food, and when I contacted her she asked me to keep it for her until she came this way again!!! When I asked where she thought I might keep my own frozen and larder food until she was able to collect this she had no answer. However you look at it, moving is stressful.

We moved into a very fancy flat in Chelsea a few years back, but the shock in bathroom cupboard was a rubber tube and “accessories” - a full blown (not medical) enema kit. We laughed but was shocked anyone would leave that when rest of place was spotless.

I thought eveyone did or at least have a firm to do it, isnt there some kind of law about leaving houses clean before moving, maybe an unwritten law.

We'd cleared and cleaned the loft before we put the house on the market and the agent said he couldn't believe how clean the loft was. We'd had the roof replaced when we moved in and had everything insulated and boarded.

Gagajo
The deposit scheme does allow you to claim, but maybe not for cleaning. We let out my late brother’s flat, nicely renovated, left to my daughter till she was in a position to use or sell it after Uni. One family wrecked the shower room, looked as though candles had burnt down onto the surfaces. Carpets and suite had to be replaced, bed looked as though somebody had had a baby in it, maybe they had (the mattress protector I put on had been removed for some reason). Hob was so encrusted with burnt on food it had to be replaced. And everything needed a professional clean before new people could go in, I could have tackled it but too disheartened. Plus the flat was empty while all that got done. They didn’t get their deposit back, but it cost double the deposit to put right, and no more money forthcoming. We could have taken them to court, but the stress, time and money put us off

Our house was spotless when we moved. Like others, the house we moved into was disgusting. It took 4 cleaners 4 hours just to get it looking respectable. But the icing on the cake was a fridge complete with opened tin of dog food and fork stuck in it. I doubt the fridge had been cleaned for years!

Ive never yet moved to one that doesn't need a clean down- even a new build bought many many years ago had builders dust etc in it.! I think the reason there's a trend for removing bulbs now is because they are mostly the very expensive LED types of energy saving bulbs nowadays, which last at least 2years, and are VERY expensive- so they will want to keep them.Its rare to find the very cheap just plug in '4 for a £1' bulbs these days that folk didn't think worth taking with them?

OH was abroad when we last moved. Mum came over and helped clean. We could have eaten off the floor, we left the place spotless. A different story at the new house. They had taken all the curtain rails and light bulbs and swopped the carpets for ill- fitting old ones. Mum was having to clean all the cupboards out before putting anything away. Nightmare.

When we moved out last Oct our house had been cleaned from attic to ground floor - I was cleaning as the removal men were emptying each room too. It looked lovely even after 35 years there!

We've just sold the renovation project we bought 3 years ago and which we lived in for 6 months between sales - the lady who has moved in said how clean it was. The property we bought was ok but the oven was something else and took me the best part of a week to finally clean whatever had been burned on the bottom of it. The previous owner had done nothing at all to the property as we could see from the photos from the sale before them so we had a month of decorating before we moved in.

We moved 22 years ago but I blitzed the place beforehand and had an oven cleaning Co round to scrub the oven so it was spotless

I always clean before we move out and the house looks better than it ever did when we lived in it! I always end up cleaning again when we move in because although I am not a very good housewife, I don't want to live in other people's dirt and they never seem to clean as they move out. Perhaps it is Karma that I get two lots of deep cleaning in quick succession to make up for my tardiness the rest of the time.

We left our house spotlessly clean. The new buyer was very difficult, for example criticising a broken window pane which had only just happened recently. When I had a drive by the house after three years of not going down that road, I was shocked. The windows had not been cleaned, the cracked window was still there and the house looked uncared for.

Every time I have moved my house has been clinically clean and the cooker cleaned. I never wanted anyone to be able to say to the neighbours how dirty the house was afterwards. Lol

The last house we moved in to the bath was completely covered in scum, there were used makeup pads in the drawer beneath the sink. They had obviously broken eggs in one of the kitchen cupboards and instead of cleaning it up they waited for it to dry and then turned the shelf over. It took me ages to scrub that house, it broke my heart because it was supposed to be our forever home and it was tainted by it. We moved to this house in March and I feel a lot happier now.

Every house we've moved into has been OK too and DH always cleans before we leave a house. It's certainly what I would expect.
Our current flat had an elderly lady living in it before she went into a home and her family had cleaned and had it painted while. The kitchen was not great, especially the oven, but we'll be replacing it soon. The bathroom was clean but smelly, I think it's the floor and we've done all we can. I think we'll have to remove and replace the floor which is pebbles embedded in a lot of very grotty grout.

Moved several times and always left the house as clean as I would hope to find it. Heard after one move that the new owner had said she had never moved into a house so clean. A pity it was not like that when we moved in with our 14 month old baby and me pregnant. Arrived about 4pm to discover the owners had employed a 'Man with a Van'. Half their furniture was still in the house and the woman was having a bath (she did not clean it afterwards)! Our removal men promptly put all their furniture in the garage so we could at least organise getting the baby to bed. Discovered the kitchen was filthy. Sticky rings where jam jars etc had been removed and the vinyl floor was not plain brown but mustard with a brown pattern. Plus side was they never emptied the loft and we discovered an old fashioned type wooden sledge. The children had many hours of fun with it.