Your DIY Checklist for the Best Pre Occupation Cleaning – Part II

In Part I of this two-part blog series, we dealt with the stress of moving to a new house, and where to begin should you prefer to do a thorough pre-occupation cleaning yourself – a task vitally important to ensuring your new space is sparklingly clean and perfectly ready for the day you move in. Our advice was to begin with the most bacteria-laden rooms in the house, namely the bathroom and kitchen as those are the most time-consuming and require the most elbow-grease and energy. But once that is done, no small feat by anyone’s standards, you can begin with the rest of the house, and this is what we’ll cover now in Part II: a systematic approach to hygiene cleaning that will ensure you cover everything, including those often-ignored areas that accumulate dust and grime.

To begin with, any well-thought-out pre occupation cleaning begins with direction: work from top to bottom i.e. ceilings to floors, that way you only have to clean up once. Start by dusting all the cornices and light fittings, you’ll be amazed at how much dirt and dust accumulate on and around your light fixtures, not to mention the dead bugs that gather inside closed fittings. Don’t forget those ventilation bricks, use your vacuum cleaner to give those a proper clean, and remember to dust the tops of doors, chances are you’ll find thick layers of dirt up there. Next, focus on the windows, not just the glass panes, but the areas where the windows meet the walls and sills, these are often terribly grimy, particularly with the Cape South-Easter regularly doing its thing. Consider the state of the walls – apart from the light switch plates which will need washing – will a dust-down suffice or are there grubby marks that need to be cleaned. If the walls require a wash down, be sure to use a gentle cleaner to patch-test the paint first for washability. Then move on to the doors which will definitely need proper hygiene cleaning, especially the door handles which harbor plenty of germs. And finally finish off with the floors – vacuum and scrub down tiled floors, but consider hiring a company to clean the carpets. While you can hire a machine yourself, it’s better to find someone reputable who offers dry carpet cleaning – a system which leaves your carpets much cleaner and instantly usable so that you don’t have to worry about drying time, particularly if you’re unfortunate enough to be moving in the winter months.

And that concludes our DIY checklist for the best pre occupation cleaning. Best of luck, and remember, if you need any help or decide at the very least that you would rather outsource the carpet cleaning (a wise decision), QClean have helped many satisfied customers with their pre and post occupation cleaning and they’ll happily tailor their service to meet your needs, whatever they might be.