We clean from the ceiling down

An empty house shows every missed spot

In an empty house, all the dirt is in plain sight. With the beds and dressers gone, you see everything that collected behind and under them. Light comes straight through bare windows and lands on every smudge. That is why a move out clean is its own job. We are cleaning spots that were covered the whole time someone lived there, and the next person sees all of them on their first walkthrough.

We work in one order every time. Ceiling fans and the tops of door frames get dusted first, then mini blinds and window sills, then counters and appliances. Anything that falls lands on a surface we have not cleaned yet. Bathrooms and the kitchen come next because they take the longest. The floors are last. We vacuum from the back of the house toward the front door, so nobody walks across a finished room on the way out.

Clean out of order and you clean the same room twice. Dust the ceiling fans after the counters and the counters need doing again. Vacuum before the blinds and the grit from the blinds ends up in the carpet. In a furnished home that is easy to miss. In an empty one the buyer's agent or the landlord sees it, because there is nothing else in the room to look at. We would rather do each surface once and have it stay done.

• Ceiling fans and door frames dusted first
• Mini blinds and window sills wiped down
• Inside the oven and the microwave
• Laundry room and appliances cleaned
• Floors vacuumed last, back room to front door

Buyers and landlords check the kitchen first

When a landlord or a buyer's agent walks through, the kitchen gets the hardest look. They open the oven and the microwave, and they run a finger along the top of the refrigerator. So we clean inside the oven and inside the microwave on every move out, and we wipe down every appliance that stays with the house. Baked grease on the oven floor is the thing people most often leave behind, because nobody wants to scrub an oven the week they move.

Bathrooms get the next closest look. Soap film on the shower walls and hair behind the toilet read as dirty to anyone, even when the rest of the house looks fine. With the bottles and towels gone, we can reach the shelves and corners that were always behind something. We clean the tub or shower, the toilet, the sink and the mirror, then wipe the door frame and finish the floor on the way out.

Skip either room and the house fails the walkthrough, no matter how good the floors look. A new owner who finds grease in the oven on move in day starts scrubbing before they unpack a single box. A landlord walking with a checklist writes it down and takes a photo. That is why the kitchen and the bathrooms get the most time on a move out clean. We do them before the floors, never after.

Older North Shore houses hold more dust

Around Danvers the houses are mostly capes and colonials, with split-levels and ranches on the newer streets. Closer to Salem and Lynn there are more two-family houses and triple-deckers. A lot of these homes still heat with radiators. Dust packs in between the fins and on the wall behind them, where nobody can reach with a couch in the way. Once the room is empty we dust them properly, along with the wide ledges over old door frames.

Many older houses here have double-hung windows with aluminum storm windows fitted over them. The track between the two collects grit and dead bugs, and nobody cleans it while they live there. We clean windows inside and out. On a move out we open them up and get into those tracks, because a clean pane over a dirty track still looks neglected. Mini blinds get wiped on both sides, and the sills get done after them so the dust from the blinds does not stay behind.

Hardwood is common in the main rooms of older homes here, with carpet in the bedrooms. Where a rug or a bed sat for a long time, the wood under it is a different color. The edge of that spot holds a line of dust. We vacuum carpet and hardwood right up to the walls and inside the closets. That way the outline of the old furniture is not the first thing the next person sees when they walk in.

Massachusetts weather adds work to every move

A winter move means movers walking in from the snow all day, and the road salt and sand come in on every boot. Salt dries into a white film on hardwood and gets ground into carpet near the door. This is one reason we clean after the last load goes out instead of before. The front hall and the stairs take the worst of it, so in winter those are the last places we clean before we leave.

Spring moves come with mud season. Wet ground by the driveway turns into dirt tracked across every floor the movers cross. Once it dries, that grit scratches hardwood each time someone walks over it. In late spring the pollen arrives. A house left with the windows open during the move gets a yellow film on the sills and counters. We close the windows before we dust, or the pollen blows right back in.

Summers here are humid, and a closed-up house with nobody living in it holds that damp air. Basements in older homes tend to be fieldstone or block, and the laundry room is usually down there. If the washer and dryer leave with the old owner, the floor under them is full of lint and dust. It has been sitting there as long as the machines have. We clean that spot and the rest of the laundry room, so the basement looks cared for when the new owner walks down.