When to book your move-out cleaning

Book when the date is set, not when the move gets close

In practice a move-out clean is booked as early as the removal van. As soon as you know which day you hand the home back, there is nothing to gain by waiting – the slot you want is the one that goes first.

Month-ends are the bottleneck

Most Swedish tenancies run to the end of a month, which concentrates demand for move-out cleaning into a few days. The last week of the month is the hardest, and the summer months are hardest of all, because the end of the school year and the holidays fall in the same period. A mid-month date is almost always easier to get – and sometimes cheaper.

Put the clean the day before the inspection

The sequence that works is: the home is emptied, the move-out clean is done, the inspection happens the following day. Two reasons:

• If anything has to be redone, there is a day left to do it in. Clean on inspection day and you have no margin at all.
• A home that is used between the clean and the inspection is no longer judged as freshly cleaned. Even one night of packing in the flat shows.

The home has to be empty

Move-out cleaning is done in an emptied home. Furniture, boxes and forgotten items mean the cleaner cannot reach floors, wardrobes and the space behind appliances – and most companies will then clean only what is accessible, at the same price. So the van has to be finished before the clean, not running alongside it.

Count backwards from the inspection

A plan that tends to hold:

• As soon as the date is set – book the move-out clean and any removal help.
• A week before – confirm the time and access, and check what is included so nothing appears as an extra on the day.
• The day before the clean – the home must be emptied, storage room and balcony included.
• Cleaning day – someone needs to be able to let the cleaner in and lock up afterwards.
• The next day – inspection and key handover.

If you are booking at short notice

You can often still get a slot with a few days' margin, but the choice narrows and an evening or a weekend may be what is left. Two things help: be flexible on the time of day rather than the date, and have the details ready – address, square metres, number of rooms, whether there is a balcony and a storage room, and how the cleaner gets in. With that in hand a company can answer immediately instead of coming back with questions first.

See companies and available times for move-out cleaning, and work through our move-out cleaning checklist before the inspection.