The Complete Move-In Cleaning Checklist (Room by Room)

A move-in cleaning is a top-to-bottom service that prepares an empty home for new occupants — every surface, every appliance, every corner that the previous resident is no longer responsible for. The single biggest advantage of move-in cleaning is that you can clean places you'd never normally reach: inside every cabinet, behind every appliance, the tops of every door frame. Below is the complete room-by-room checklist Queen of Maids uses on move-in jobs, plus guidance on what's worth doing yourself if you're DIYing it.

Whole-home tasks

Before going room-by-room, hit these whole-home items first:

Kitchen

The kitchen has more surfaces than any other room. Hit them in this order:

Bathrooms (each one)

Bathrooms are the most labor-intensive room per square foot. For each bathroom:

Bedrooms

Empty bedrooms are easier than bathrooms, but don't skip the details:

Living and dining areas

Laundry and utility

What to do yourself vs hire out

If you're tackling move-in cleaning yourself, prioritize the kitchen and bathrooms — those are the highest-impact rooms for your daily quality of life, and they're where previous-occupant grime is most likely to be. Hire out the rest if you can: cleaning inside cabinets, baseboards, and every door frame takes much longer than it looks, and a professional team will finish a standard-sized home in roughly half a day. Queen of Maids offers move-in cleaning across Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and Denver, priced by home size.