5 tips for cleaning your house before you move

1. Clean rooms you don’t use, as you empty them

As you pack up your belongings and move your filled boxes to your garage or nominated room, you should be able to clean the rooms that you don’t use on a daily basis such as a guest bedroom, conservatory or dining room.

Try and wipe down all of your skirting boards and window ledges, use an extendable brush to clean the hard to reach corners and light fittings, before giving the floor a good clean with a hoover. If there are still large items of furniture in the room, you won’t be able to hoover behind them. Don’t worry, though, you’ll probably want to give every room a quick hoover after everything has been packed onto the removals lorry.

2. Don’t forget your loft, shed and garage

When you’re packing up your home, you need to take everything with you, including items stored in corners of your loft you might not have thought about. Anything you don’t want to take can be recycled, donated or sold.

Your shed is one area of your home that can be packed up first, and if you’ve got lots of sawdust and debris on the floor, give it a good sweep out. If you have some carpet off-cuts in your garage, they could be useful in your new home as temporary door mats to protect your hall flooring as you move your furniture inside.

3. Dedicate a few hours to cleaning your kitchen and bathrooms

As you pack up and empty cupboards in your kitchen and bathrooms, give the insides a good clean with a damp cloth, before wiping with a dry cloth. You should be able to box up most of your kitchen belongings a week before you move, only leaving essentials behind to go in one final box on moving day. In your bathrooms, there’s no reason why you can’t put everything in a box in the corner, and just get things out as you need them, so that you’re good to go.

Cleaning your oven can seem like a mammoth task, but with a bit of elbow grease and an oven cleaning kit, it is possible to leave your oven looking like new.

4. Final checks

Just before you move, check everywhere, paying special attention to places where furniture has been and also behind the doors.

One final wipe down and hoover should do the trick. Just make sure you close the door after you’ve completed each room, so that no one goes in and undoes your hard work.

If you don’t want to do all the cleaning yourself, you could look online and find a professional cleaning company to do it for you. This will ensure the house looks immaculate when the keys are handed over, and could cost as little as £50, depending on the size of your home. The new owners will really appreciate being able to move straight in, and not having to clean before they unpack. If you are moving out of a rented property, it’s also advisable that you leave it as clean as you can so that you get your agreed deposit back from the landlord.