Just Bought a Home in Vancouver? Clean This Before You Move In

An empty home is the only chance you get to clean the parts a sofa hides. The window is short, usually from the day you pick up keys to the day the truck arrives, so the order matters more than the effort. Here is what to clean before you move in, in the sequence that avoids doing anything twice.

Clean what the previous occupant could not reach

There are two kinds of dirty in a home you have just bought or rented. The first is the dirt you can see, which is usually the stuff the last clean addressed. The second is the dirt that was physically blocked: behind the fridge, under the bed, the back of the wardrobe, the shelf above the closet rod, the gap between the washer and the wall.

The second kind is the reason a move-in clean is worth doing while the place is empty. Once furniture is in, those surfaces are gone for as long as you live there. There is also a third category worth checking on possession day: the rushed exit clean. When a move-out clean is done in a hurry, the floors are the last thing attempted and often the worst, and the interior of the oven and the fridge drawers get skipped entirely.

The order that saves time

Empty rooms are fast to clean because you can move freely. Use that. Work from the top of each room down, dry before wet, and leave every floor until the end.

1. Walk through with everything open. Cupboards, closets, windows, the bathroom fan. Look for moisture, smell, and anything the last occupant left behind before you start cleaning around it.
2. Cabinets and drawers first. Vacuum the crumbs out, wipe the inside, the shelf edges and the runners, then the fronts. Leave the doors open to dry.
3. Appliances next, because they need dwell time. Fridge with the shelves out, oven, dishwasher filter, washer door gasket and pump filter, dryer lint trap and duct.
4. Bathroom. Spray the shower and leave it. Scrub the grout, soak the shower head, clean the exhaust grille, then the vanity, then the toilet, then the floor.
5. Windows, tracks and sills, then the screens. Vacuum the track dry first, then wipe.
6. Walls, switches, doors and baseboards. A barely damp cloth, not a wet one.
7. Floors last, including the closet floors and the edges, then dry them.
8. Air it out, then leave the place alone for a few hours before anything comes in.

The rooms that matter most

Kitchen

The fridge is the big one: shelves and drawers out and washed in the sink, the door gasket wiped with a cloth rather than sprayed, and the coils or the vent at the back vacuumed. Then the cupboard interiors, which hold a fine film of cooking grease on the upper shelves. The oven, including the door glass on the inside. The range hood filter, soaked rather than wiped. The sink rim where the tap meets the counter, and the drain. The dishwasher filter, which is usually the worst thing in the room.

Bathroom

The exhaust grille first, because it is clogged and it is why the mirror fogs. Then the grout, the shower head, the caulk line at the tub, the toilet including the base and the bolts, and the inside of the medicine cabinet. Under the vanity is usually a ring of dried product and a hair trap. Pull the drain cover and clear the hair before the first shower, not after.

Bedroom and closets

Wipe the closet shelf and rod, then the floor of the closet, which is where the previous tenant’s dust settled. Windows and sills, because a bedroom is where condensation shows first. Baseboards behind where the bed will go. If a mattress came with the place, vacuum it on both sides rather than steaming it, since you cannot get it dry before bedtime.

The move-in timeline

When	What to do
Before possession day	Book the clean and the elevator, confirm keys, measure the doorways
Possession day	Open everything, photograph condition, clean kitchen and bathroom
One or two days before the truck	Cabinets, appliances, windows, closets, then all floors
Moving day	Runners and mats down, no cleaning, protect what you just did
First week	Air the place, set up, book anything that needs drying time

What can wait

Plenty, as long as you are honest about the difference between clean and finished. Exterior glass can wait until spring. Curtains can wait. The storage locker, the balcony, the garage and the inside of the oven can all wait a week, and so can the walls in rooms you are not using yet.

Carpet cleaning is the one to schedule carefully rather than skip. Shampooed carpet needs most of a day to dry, and furniture placed on damp carpet leaves marks and can grow a smell underneath. Book it after the cleaning and before the furniture, never the other way around.

Vancouver notes for move-in week

In a strata building, the clean and the move are two bookings, not one. Most buildings want the elevator reserved, a damage deposit, and moving inside set hours, and some restrict moves to weekdays. Confirm with the property manager before possession day, because the elevator is the constraint, not the cleaning.

Rain is the other local factor. A wet moving day is how new floors get scuffed, so lay runners from the door to the rooms and put a mat outside. In older character homes, keep the mop barely damp on original fir floors. In rentals with older carpet, vacuum in two directions and have it cleaned properly later rather than renting a machine the day you move in.

What it costs

A move-out or possession-day clean is $329 to $549 and takes about four hours. A move-in clean on an empty home is the same work on the same kind of empty space, so we quote it the same way. A move-out clean covers the interiors, the appliances, the tracks and the floors, which is the list above. If the home also needs the high dusting, the grout and the cabinet interiors, that is a deep clean at $349 to $549.

Afterwards, recurring cleaning from $119 to $179 keeps it from sliding back, at roughly two hours a visit. Rates are flat and confirmed before booking, payment is after the clean, and anything missed on the agreed list is re-done within 48 hours. The room-by-room version of this list is in our room-by-room cleaning checklist.

Frequently asked questions

Should the home be cleaned before or after the movers arrive?

Before, always. Cleaning around furniture takes longer and leaves the blocked surfaces untouched. If the timing is tight, clean the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom floors first, move in, and finish the rest over the first week.

Can I do a move-in clean myself in a day?

A one-bedroom apartment, yes, if you start early and have the supplies already. A house with three bathrooms, an oven that has never been cleaned and carpet throughout is a long day for one person, which is usually the point where booking the empty-home clean is cheaper than a second day off work.

What if the previous owner left things behind?

Photograph it before you touch it and check your contract or the tenancy agreement about what was supposed to be removed. Then clean around it rather than storing it, and deal with removal separately so it does not end up in your first week of cleaning.

Moving in and want the place reset first? Framework Property Care covers 32 Vancouver neighbourhoods, flat-rate from $119. Book a clean or call 604-966-3882.

Once the boxes are in, the first-night list covers what actually has to be clean before you sleep there.