Did you clean your old house before you moved out?

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,

Oops , a full set of false teeth in her mouth

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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....?

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.

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.

Always leave the house we are leaving spotless

Doesn’t always happen for us though

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!

We cleaned to the best of our ability but everyone's standards are different in life esp where cleaning is concerned !

I have always left a house in a clean and tidy condition. I would not even consider buying a house that appeared unclean when I viewed. It would put me right off! I don't even look at a house on Rightmove if the main picture looks scruffy.

My DD bought a house and when she moved in the couple leaving it had used the cupboard under the sink as the kitchen bin, and left food rotting on the base, they hadn't cleaned anything for weeks by the look of every room, and even left dirty water in the bathroom basin with the plug in. So disheartening.

Yes!
We found, in the house we moved to, in the attic, an old carpet someone had been sick on along time previously. A chimney they told us had fires in recently but was completely blocked off. A kitchen cupboard removed without notifying us they would do so…….and a kitchen drawer empty, except for alot of human nail clippings…..

Certainly did. The house we moved into unfortunately didn’t have our standards. Their cooker had more grease and dirt on it that it was easier to buy a new one!

I moved recently and got professional cleaners in to ensure my already clean home was spotless.

I was shocked at how filthy my new house was. They hadn’t even emptied the fridge

Left it spotless and luckily houses l have moved too were spotless too.
My daughters house she moved too was dusgusting we had to literally chisel the dirt of the oven,it could never have been cleaned in years!

Although I'm not renowned for my love of housework (!), each house we've left I have cleaned scrupulously from top to bottom.

I always leave instructions/manuals for any household equipment; a full loo roll and a spare, and working lightbulbs in all fittings. I also leave them a 'House Book' with details of room measurements, how much paint, wallpaper and curtain fabric is needed for each room etc. Details of how to operate the heating and burglar alarm etc. If they were moving from out of borough I also told them where to find the local recycling centre, hospital and doctor's practice. All of this was left in the kitchen with a welcome card and a bottle of wine.

No one has ever reciprocated for any house we have moved into. The first house we ever lived in was 'acceptably' clean but smelled, we later discovered it was damp and mold behind the wallpaper.

Our second house had not been lived in for several years. The seller (a single man) appeared to have vacuumed but didn't clean the bathroom, the cooker or the kitchen cupboards, and several lights were faulty.

When we moved to our present house we booked into a B&B for a week before moving our furniture in so we could repaint some rooms - I couldn't live with a brown living room and leaf green kitchen! I'm so glad we did as every room needed a thorough clean and repairs done. The built in cooker was unbelievably dirty and broken, cabinet doors were falling off and three radiators were rusty and leaking. I cleaned the bathroom twice but still couldn't get the brown stains out the toilet, and the shower didn't work! It was a very busy week and I began to wonder if we'd done the right thing in moving here. But we could see the funny side of it and had a lot of fun and laughs making it liveable.

Yes from top to bottom

Gosh so much cleaning going on! When we moved into our present house, the previous owners had to leave a load of their belongings as they couldn't book a big enough lorry, they left a lot of valuable stuff in the safe but couldn't remember where they had left the key and half of the upstairs had no electricity because mice had chewed through the cables. They had also left the stables deep littered and when I started digging the bedding out (which took me two weeks) I had rats everywhere. Goodness a few chips behind the cooker and windows you can't see through are in a different league. It really didn't matter as we just loved the house and over 20 years later I still feel the same. I really don't sweat the small stuff!