Did you clean your old house before you moved out?

I have cleaned every house I’ve moved out of from top to bottom. My last house was a rental and the new tenant actually contacted me to say thank you because she said it was so clean.

The first house we bought we moved in and it was filthy , dropped food left inside cupboards, bathrooms looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned for weeks, unvacumned carpets and dusty surfaces. I scrubbed everything before I would use a thing and I was only 21 so hadn’t done loads of housework . We bought it off ex’s workmate so you’d think they would have made some effort!

I’ve always made sure I’ve left everything nice for the people moving in and left a card and some chocolates or wine. I’m waiting to move again soon and will leave my flat spotless for my first time buyer, who is so excited to be getting her own place ( age 23) . However I must admit, this time at age 68 I am going to pay for someone else to clean it!

Always leave the house we are leaving spotless

Doesn’t always happen for us though

It's a long time since I moved but we always left our houses scrupulously clean. When my Mum's house was sold it was in reasonable condition but we still cleaned it from top to bottom.
We have been reasonably lucky in that the houses we moved into in the past were pretty clean too.

I really don't understand how people can leave their houses in such a mess. I can only think that they think it is normal.

I grew up in an army family. We moved every 18 - 24 months. Someone came to check that the house was in tip top condition when we left. If it wasn't, a fine had to be paid. My mother didn't have one fine in over 40 years of moving.

I tried to leave our last house clean but had to do the last of the cleaning while the removal men were working. When we moved into our present house, it was immaculate but had been empty for months. The house before that - the previous owners took all the lightbulbs and some wires were left hanging down and they took the grotty carpet we didn't want to buy but left the sharp carpet grippers in every doorway. Our youngest child was 2 with soft baby feet....?

We deliberately left a day free between the last items went into store (unfortunate hiatus between moving out and moving in) and hired a professional company to throughly clean right through, including woodwork, windows and a couple of carpets that needed it.
After 34 years as a Foster Carer, and still having one little one with us, such thorough cleaning hadn't been top of my agenda.
I just could not leave an unclean house for the new residents

We cleaned our house from top to bottom - would have been embarrassed if we had left a messy house. When you are selling a house it is usually spotlessly clean and that is what prospective buyers expect when they buy your house.
The bungalow we bought had been empty for a while, but the sellers actually painted the walls and doors between viewing and our moving in. They also took a falling down shed away.

When we moved 2 years ago, I hired a cleaner to clean our old house before we left so it was spotless. There was a hold up with our solicitors the day we moved (a Friday), so we did not get into the house until nearly 4pm, so the movers literally dumped all our furniture in the house and left. The next day we had to move all the furniture back out as the house was filthy, the previous owner, had not even emptied the bins, or removed any old toiletries or cleaning products from the bathrooms or kitchen, instead, she left pink love heart stickers on everything, including the toilet brushes in the bathrooms. I was horrified, and mistakenly thought it was normal practice to leave your home in a clean and tidy state for the new owners to save them extra hassle on the day, especially as she had given me the details of her cleaner. It is definitely something that I would stipulate as part of the moving plan should we ever move house again.

We have lived in the same house for our entire married life, so we don't have a story to tell about this, apart from that our daughter moved several times and always left her old house immaculate. I would do the same.

The worst house purchase - we moved ourselves in, I refused to allow any furniture in until I had cleaned. Dog hair and dirt everywhere, the oven door was not black glass and the food inside was not left as a house warming gift. The bathroom sink had a big crack and I had to go out and buy sink unblocker, bath and toilet - yuk. Greasy cooker hood pad oozing onto the hob. No cupboards cleaned out, mould ridden bathroom grout and silicon seal (note to self - HG Mould Spray)… etc etc. It took 3 months to get rid of the dog fleas too. Previous owners had two small children living in the muck.
Just moved out from a later property and it was spotless and polished to within and inch of its life, new folk moved in and my old neighbour said they had ripped out the kitchen, carpets, re-decorated every room, got rid of the curtains in favour of blinds. ( And ripped out the garden in favour of a party area and hot tub) It’s called making the house into your home but removing junk and leaving it hygienically clean is only respectful. Perhaps this ought to be part of selling - an agreement to have the place inhabitable for the people who have paid you an obscene amount of money for your roof and for walls. I’d like to see this as part of the legal process. It could be a good new business opportunity too for a cleaning company. The house I have just moved into I came the day before the move to clean as it was, not filthy but had a general “stickiness” - had to sleep on the floor ( no furniture) - visit to Chiropractor followed.

I left my house spotless when I moved. The house we moved into looked alright when we viewed it, but like tidyskatemum mum we found the place was filthy. The carpets were full of dirt, the blinds were covered in dust The electric shower was dangerous, I could go on. The kitchen was the worst. I was covered in grease, our daughters tried to clean it, ,even resorting to scraping it with a knife. It would not budge. Nevertheless, I had a new kitchen fitted straight away. When we bought the house the paperwork said everything had been checked, it had not.

One of our moves was to what was a ‘project’ owned by an old lady who was on her own. I knew it was going to be grim after the viewing, think Miss Haversham, but it was even worse than expected. When we pulled up an old rug in the kitchen it was crawling with maggots. We stayed there for 30 years, and it was a beautiful house eventually. I left it spotless and left wine and instructions about the house and area. Apart from that experience all other four moves have been very clean.

Someone once told me that everyone moves out of a spotlessly clean house and into a filthy one. Strangely that does seem to be true. When my daughter moved recently the new house was so dirty she refused to take her children into it and stayed in a hotel overnight. It cost them almost £1000 to have industrial cleaners in for the day. The house is lovely, in a very desirable area and the fixtures and fitting were all very expensive but the neighbours told her the previous occupants were really nice people but not into housework!

Oops , a full set of false teeth in her mouth

We had some friends who bought a little house near us in France to convert into a gite. The previous owner had died and everything was left intact. We offered to clear it out.
My daughter was 4 years and during one visit shouted look me,

We left a bottle of wine for the new owners of our old home and a welcome to your new home card. They sent us a lovely letter saying how useful it was we’d labelled all the keys and told them where the stopcocks were etc.
The place we moved to was a big mistake. We must have been mad to buy it. It was the filthiest house you have ever seen. Makes me squirm just thinking about it. We have since moved again I am pleased to say.

I scrupulously clean before moving! One house I moved into was horrific! I’d only been able to view the house in evening, family eating meal, so a fairly quick look, when moving in discovered carpet in dining room sodden with dog urine! Bath disgusting, whole place filthy, spent two days cleaning before unpacking!! Only time it’s happened in several moves!

When we moved to our last house, we had fleas in the top bedrooms, a flood in the cellar, the kitchen was a no go area and the whole place was disgusting. I had a 2 year old so we concentrated on getting her bedroom done first and the bathroom.
I could never leave a house in a filthy mess. It is unacceptable

When my DD moved out of her flat I scrubbed it from top to bottom even though it was going to be demolished, I couldn't help myself it's just the way i am.

If you’ve spent most of your married life in service accommodation it is ingrained in you! Though I put my all into cleaning our last quarter for March out as usual only be told, as the inspection team were admiring their reflections in the floor tiles? that it was not going to be occupied as the MOD were selling the land they were on!
The couple who bought our last house were about to give birth in very short order and I felt it incumbent on me to leave her absolutely nothing to do, so yes, it was spotless but would have been anyway. I wish I could have said the same for this house when we moved in.

I’d have been too embarrassed not to! I had things fixed, the chimney swept, replaced a bird bath that I was taking with me, because I knew the birds relied on it for water. It had been in the same place for more than 50 years, apparently! I was really sad when I learnt that it had been swept away by an extension, but it was none of my business more. I must have spent over £300 and 20 hours cleaning and sorting things out during the last week…

Yes cleaned everything to the point of my adult daughter saying I was going over the top, also left wine and card
The house I moved into was ok but not as clean as the one I left

Yes, I did as it was sparkling when I moved in! It was forty years ago but I can still remember walking in to the smell of polish and the dazzle of shining windows. And I left it in the same condition. The house I moved to was...well...not clean at all. I had a six week old baby and I had to sit on a packing crate to feed him while my mother found somewhere not too grimy to feed my two year old. (And I'm not Tabitha Twitchett -our family's name for obsessively houseproud people - by any means, but I don't think the house had been cleaned from the day it was sold to us to the day we moved in three months later.

Yes I did, and would never leave dirt for someone else. We bought a filthy place (luckily we were able to live elsewhere for a month) which took months of renovating and I can only imagine they never cleaned! The garden on the other hand was lovely.

I've moved lots of times and always left houses clean. DH jokes that the last view of me moving out of a house is on all fours, bottom first out of the front door, cleaning cloth in hand. I plan to get a professional cleaner in for the next (final?) move.