How to Clean a Student House Before Moving Out: The Deposit Checklist

Written by Iva, founder of Iva Cleaning Services London.

Every June and July a few hundred thousand students hand back the keys to a shared house, and a large share of them lose part of a deposit to cleaning. The amounts are rarely huge, typically £50 to £150 per person, but across four or five housemates and a landlord with twenty properties it adds up, and most of it is avoidable with one organised day and the right order of work.

This is the checklist we use when we are booked to clean a student house for check-out in London, written for the people living in it. It covers what the inventory clerk photographs, what to do about the things that have been left all year, and how to split the work between housemates so it actually gets done. We clean these properties for landlords and accommodation providers through our student accommodation cleaning in London, so this is the standard we are judged against.

Start with the inventory, not the mop

Find the check-in inventory from the start of the tenancy. It should be in an email from the agent, with photographs. That document is the standard: the house has to go back in the same state of cleanliness, allowing for wear but not for dirt. If the check-in says “professionally cleaned throughout”, that is what you are aiming at. If the house was grubby when you arrived and the inventory says so, you are not responsible for making it better than that.

If nobody can find the check-in report, ask the agent for it now. A landlord with no check-in evidence has a weak claim for any cleaning deduction, and knowing that changes how much weekend you spend on the skirting boards.

Agree a plan with the house

The common areas are everyone’s responsibility, and they are where most of the deduction lands. Agree who does what and when, before the first person leaves for the summer. The usual failure is that the housemates with the earliest flights clean their bedrooms and go, leaving the kitchen to whoever is last. Do the shared rooms together on one day with everyone there, and bedrooms individually.

Clear the house of rubbish and belongings first. Nothing can be cleaned properly with boxes on the worktops, and “items left behind” is a separate charge for disposal. Book a council bulky-waste collection two weeks ahead for the broken desk chair and the mattress topper; the slots fill in June.

The shared kitchen (half a day, two or three people)

This is the room that fails check-outs. Work through it in this order:

• Oven first, because it needs soaking time. Shelves and trays into a bin bag with hot water and a dishwasher tablet. Oven cleaner or a thick paste of bicarbonate of soda on the inside, left for as long as the label says. The door glass is what the clerk photographs; get it clear. If the oven has not been cleaned all year, this is a two-hour job and the one most worth paying for.
• Extractor filter out and soaked with the oven shelves. Hood degreased.
• Fridge and freezer. Everything out, freezer defrosted (switch it off the night before with towels on the floor), shelves washed, seals wiped, inside wiped with a mild solution.
• Every cupboard and drawer emptied and wiped inside. Yes, every one, including the one with the dead spider and the pan nobody owns.
• Hob, worktops, splashback, sink and taps. Degrease first, then descale the taps and sink; London tap water leaves a white crust that a clerk photographs every time.
• Washing machine drawer out and scrubbed; the rubber door seal folded back and the black mould wiped out; a hot empty wash.
• Bin washed and left outside to dry. Floor last, under the units and behind the fridge.

Bathrooms (two hours each)

Limescale on the taps, shower head and screen, and mould on the sealant and grout, are the two things that are nearly always worse at check-out than at check-in. Descale with vinegar or citric acid left on for half an hour, then scrub; treat the sealant with a bleach-based mould remover on a strip of kitchen roll left overnight. Toilet inside and out including under the rim and around the base; the extractor fan grille; the plugholes for hair; mirrors and tiles. The methods are in how to remove limescale and how to get rid of bathroom mould.

Bedrooms (two to three hours each)

Clerks know that bedrooms get a quick vacuum and nothing else, so they check the places a quick vacuum misses.

• Behind and under the bed. Pull it out. In a student room this is where the dust, the socks and, in older London houses, the mould on the wall live. Mould behind a bed pushed against a cold external wall is common; wipe it with a fungicidal wash and tell the landlord, because it will come back and the cause is the wall, not you.
• Inside the wardrobe, drawers and desk, emptied and wiped. The clerk opens all of them.
• Walls. Blu-Tack and poster marks. Warm water and a soft cloth for grease marks; a rubber for Blu-Tack residue. Picture-hook holes are damage, not cleaning, and are usually a small charge.
• Skirting boards, door frames, the top of the door, the window sill and frame, the light switch, the radiator. A damp cloth along each one.
• Mattress. Stripped, vacuumed both sides, any stains treated. A stained mattress is a frequent replacement charge; if there is a stain that will not shift, a professional mattress clean at £28 plus VAT for a single is cheaper than the deduction. The method is in how to clean a mattress.
• Carpet. Vacuumed slowly, edges included. If the check-in said “professionally cleaned”, the clerk will look for the same; a hired machine or a professional clean of a bedroom carpet is £35 plus VAT on its own, with a £98 minimum visit.

Hall, stairs, garden and the rest

Vacuum the stairs properly, including the edges and the landing. Wipe the banister and the front door. Sweep the garden or yard and remove every bottle; empty the outside bins or put them out for the last collection. Count the keys against the inventory and return every one, including window keys. Take meter readings and photograph them.

Photograph everything

When each room is done, photograph it the way the clerk will: wide shot, then the oven open, each cupboard open, the taps close up, the bath edge, under the bed. Make sure the date is on the file. Send the set to the agent with the keys. If a deduction is later proposed for something your photograph shows clean, that photograph is what wins the dispute. What the clerk checks, item by item, is in what the check-out inventory actually checks.

When to pay someone

If the house has five bedrooms and nobody is there in the last week, or the oven and the bathrooms have had a year of neglect, a professional end of tenancy clean usually costs less than the deduction it prevents, split five ways. Our end of tenancy clean is priced by property size, from £199 plus VAT, with the oven included, and we work from the empty house once everyone has gone. Landlords and accommodation managers who let to students book the same clean between tenancies, which is why we know what the check-in standard is on the other side.

Want it done after the last person leaves? Book online with the property size, or get a free quote for a house of five or more bedrooms.