Move-In / Move-Out Cleaning

A move-out clean is graded by somebody else -- a landlord, a property manager, a buyer with a checklist, a title company's final walkthrough. That makes it a different job from cleaning your own home, where you set the standard.

We clean the empty property end to end: inside every cabinet, drawer and closet, inside the oven and refrigerator, all appliances inside and out, bathrooms scrubbed including grout, silicone and hard-water marks on glass and fixtures, all interior glass, blinds, window and door tracks, vents, baseboards, trim, doors and frames, then floors last. Furniture marks, wall scuffs and the dust lines above where pictures hung all get attention, because those are exactly what a walkthrough finds.

A move-in clean is about not inheriting somebody else's house. Even a property cleaned before closing has usually sat empty for weeks afterwards, and in this climate an empty house does not sit still -- dry air and forced-air heat put a fine dust film on every hard surface in every room, including the ones nobody opened.

We clean before your furniture goes in, which is the only time some of it is reachable. Cabinets and closets get wiped inside so your things go into clean space rather than onto somebody else's crumbs. Bathrooms and the kitchen get sanitized properly, with mineral buildup taken off the shower glass and fixtures rather than left for you to discover. Tracks, sills and thresholds get cleared. Floors are done last, and then the house is yours rather than the last owner's.

Greeley runs on a lease calendar, and two weeks of the year carry a disproportionate amount of this work. May is move-out: leases end, students leave, deposits are on the line and landlords want units back on the market immediately. August is move-in, when the University of Northern Colorado and Aims fill up again and the same units need to be genuinely ready rather than merely empty.

Apartment work is its own discipline. Units are smaller but the standard is stricter, because a property manager inspecting a unit is looking at a list rather than at the general impression. Ovens, refrigerator interiors, cabinet interiors, blinds, tracks, bathroom grout and hard-water marks on glass and chrome are the items that come back on a deposit deduction, in roughly that order. We clean to that list.

If you manage a building or a portfolio, do not call these in one at a time in May. Send us the turnover schedule and we will plan capacity around it, because everybody in this city needs the same fortnight.