Move-In Cleaning near you

In an empty home, order matters. Work from the top down and from the back of each room toward the door, and do the insides of cabinets and closets before the floors, so dust and crumbs only fall onto surfaces that haven't been cleaned yet.

The goal is the same in each case, but the starting condition, and who you talk to about problems, differ.

A home someone else lived in doesn't need every surface disinfected, but the bathrooms, the kitchen sink and counters, and the handles and switches everyone touched are worth the extra step. Health Canada notes that authorized hard-surface disinfectants carry a DIN on the label and that the directions give a contact time, how long the surface has to stay visibly wet. Clean first, because grime shields germs from the product, and check the label for whether food-contact surfaces need a rinse afterward.

Moving day tempts people to grab whatever bottles were left under the sink. Health Canada warns never to mix bleach with ammonia-based products such as some glass cleaners, or with acids such as vinegar, because the mixture releases toxic gases, and it advises ventilating while you clean. Take unlabelled products left by the previous occupant to your municipality's household hazardous waste drop-off rather than guessing what they contain.

An empty home is the easiest one to inspect, and anything you find now can be treated before your belongings give pests new places to hide. Take a flashlight and look where each one shelters.

Mouse droppings call for a different method from ordinary dirt. The Public Health Agency of Canada advises wearing rubber or plastic gloves, never sweeping or vacuuming droppings, and spraying them and the surrounding area with a surface disinfectant approved by Health Canada or a mixture of 1 part bleach to 9 parts water, left to soak for 10 minutes before wiping up with paper towels. Many cleaning crews won't handle droppings, so ask, and call a pest control company if there are many or they keep appearing.

In a newly built home, dust from drywall, concrete and wood cutting ends up inside cabinets, on door tops and in the ductwork. A move-in clean is the final pass that gets it off the surfaces you'll use every day. If the house still has construction dust and debris everywhere, book a post-construction clean first, since that work uses different equipment and often more than one visit.

The ideal move-in clean comes after any painting, repairs or floor refinishing and before a single box arrives. If you have a few days between getting the keys and moving day, use them in this order: repairs and painting, then carpet cleaning, which needs time to dry, then the general clean, then the movers.

When the keys and the truck arrive on the same day, as often happens around July 1 in Quebec, ask the cleaners to start as soon as the keys are handed over and to do the kitchen and bathrooms first, or have the movers stack everything in one room so the others can be cleaned. Before booking, confirm that the power and water will be on at the new address and that the crew can get in if you can't be there.