Cleaning Your Apartment at the End of Your Lease

Landlords routinely expect their tenants to clean the apartment at the end of the lease. Some landlords inspect the apartment very closely to find a flaw that will allow them to deduct a fee from the security deposit. End of lease cleaning is such a common requirement that many cleaning services specialize in this task.

Bathroom

The bathroom is one of the first places your landlord will look when examining your end of lease cleaning. Cleaning the toilet is an obvious task, but many tenants overlook the area behind the toilet. The toilet will require specialized cleaning solutions, which are generally very corrosive. You can typically clean bathroom tile with ordinary cleaning solutions and some hard work.

Cabinets

Tenants do not often clean cabinets while they occupy the apartment since this requires the removal of the cabinet contents. Ensure the cabinets are completely empty when you clean them and use care not to damage the fixtures in your zeal to do a thorough job. This is also a good time to tighten the fixtures, and ensure that the doors open and close properly.

Oven

A self-cleaning oven requires less effort to clean, although it will still need a quick manual cleaning. An oven that is not self-cleaning will require much more work, since this is not a routine housecleaning task for many tenants. An end of lease cleaning will require you to apply an oven-cleaning powder to the inside of the oven and allow it to soak into the encrusted food. You can also make your own oven cleaning powder by mixing equal amounts of washing soda and borax.

Refrigerator

The area behind the refrigerator is also never cleaned during the tenant’s stay in the apartment since this requires pulling the refrigerator away from the wall. End of lease cleaning must include this area since the landlord is quite likely to move the refrigerator to inspect it. You’ll typically need to remove food spills and stains from the wall with an ordinary cleaning solution. The floor under the refrigerator can accumulate a surprising number of items that have rolled under the refrigerator.

Walls

Fill any nail holes in the walls with putty. You may also need to paint the walls if they have many holes. Check the doors as well, since they may also have holes from a picture or mirror.