A vacant unit is a unit that isn't earning. The faster it's clean and show-ready, the faster it leases — and the difference between a turnover that takes two days and one that takes a week usually comes down to whether the cleaner works from a real checklist or just wipes what they can see.
Start with the clear-out. Before anything gets cleaned, everything that isn't part of the unit has to go: leftover furniture, mattresses, bags of trash, whatever the last tenant abandoned in the closets. This is the part most cleaners won't touch, which is why property managers end up hiring a junk hauler and a cleaner and coordinating both. I do the crash-out and the clean as one job.
Kitchen next, because it takes the longest. Inside and outside of the refrigerator including the seals and the drip pan, inside the oven and under the burners, the range hood and filter, the dishwasher, the microwave, every cabinet and drawer inside and out, the sink and faucet, the counters, and finally the floor. A prospective tenant opens the fridge and the oven. They always do.
Bathrooms come next: tub and shower surround, tile and grout, toilet inside and out and behind, vanity, mirror, medicine cabinet, exhaust fan cover, and the floor including behind the toilet. Hard water stains are what make a clean bathroom still look dirty, so those need to actually come off, not just get wiped around.
Then the whole unit, top down. Ceiling fans and light fixtures, air vents, window tracks and sills, blinds, closet shelves and rods, doors and door frames, switch plates, outlet covers, and baseboards. Baseboards are the giveaway — a unit with clean baseboards reads as genuinely clean to anyone walking through it.
Floors go last, always. Vacuum the carpets, sweep and mop the hard surfaces, and get the corners and the edges where the vacuum doesn't reach.
Need a turnover handled — including the crash-out? Call Lesis Hernandez H&E Cleaning Service at (501) 400-2200 for a free estimate anywhere in Central Arkansas.