How to clean the house before selling?

Pack your things and do general house cleaning

It’s pretty obvious that to get the best price for your house, you have to do some repairs and maintenance before you put it on the market. But why, the heck, should you bother yourself with a general cleaning? The potential owner would be interested in the condition of your property or layout of rooms not the cleanliness of your cupboards, right? Well, not necessarily. First impression matters. If he or she sees too much clutter or mess, it may reflect poorly on an overall perception of the building condition. Remember as well that visitors may consider you house difficult to keep clean and without enough storage place. If those aren’t enough reasons for a general cleaning, you may want to think about all of those other houses the potential buyers will see. How yours will compare with them? As we’ve already established thanks to proper cleaning your house will look bigger and well maintained but before you run for a rag and a bucket, there are several things, you should to facilitate the whole process.

Start with decluttering. At that point, you don’t actually need to throw away or sell all of your movables. Nevertheless it’s a great moment to inspect your possessions and get rid of broken / worn / outgrown / unused (delete as appropriate ;)) things. That way you lighten the load and save your time and storage space.
When dealt with the first step, you may get to the next, which is packing. If you leave before selling the house then the task is pretty straightforward if demanding. You may pack everything and be done with it. However, if you want to stay at your house until it’s sold, then obviously you still need to keep some of your belongings at hand. However, there are a lot of things you can move to storage until removal. What are they? Think – seasonal clothing that you won’t wear in the next couple of weeks, most of children’s toys (if you have kids of course), personal documents and archives, pictures and certificates, seldom used kitchen appliances and alike. It’s a good idea as well to pack away all of those back-up sets of everything: linens, cutlery, cooking utensils, tools etc.
Now storage. Keeping all those neatly boxed things lying around in your house would be counterproductive, as this doesn’t make it look less messy. But don’t worry. Even if you don’t have new home for them yet, there are other solutions. Ask your friends or relatives whether you can leave your stuff in their garage or basement. If for some reason that’s not a viable option, you may consider renting some storage facility. As a last resort, you use your own basement or garage. Keep in mind though that you should avoid this if possible, as potential buyers may want to see those (decluttered) parts of your house as well.
Everything packed, so now we are ready to start cleaning proper. You may finally grab that forgotten rag and bucket and start polishing your house top to bottom. Ok, ok, I was just kidding. Relax. Instead of running yourself ragged hire professional cleaners. Deciding on such a service will pay off both in terms of your saved time and enhanced looks of the house. How to find a reliable local cleaning company? Ask your friends or read some internet reviews. In my opinion, Euro Cleaning Services in Des Plaines, IL offer one of the best house cleaning. They are well known for their flexible schedules and customized cleaning packages teamed with affordable prices. Another great choice, particularly if you are eco-conscious, is Kamila house cleaning in Glenview, Elmwood Park and several other suburbs. They use only “green”, ecological products that are safe for you and environment. Both of the aforementioned companies offer general house cleaning in preparation to selling you house as well.
Finally, it’s time for thorough cleaning. You hired cleaning team to take care of everything. They will keep an eye on details, paying particular attention to the rooms that are most interesting to the potential buyers – kitchen, bathroom, dining room and living room. Due to their character, bathroom and kitchen often require heavy duty scrubbing to remove all those ugly residues from tub, shower stall, toilet, sink or stove. Another important step is window cleaning both inside and outside, including windowsills. Your cleaning team takes care of less obvious areas as well. Maybe dusting lampshades, radiators or baseboards doesn’t sound particularly exotic but how about the walls. Yes, they can get dirty and it’s not only a domain of young children with a box of crayons. So, if you don’t want to paint the whole thing, cleaning is often a viable option. That done your cleaning team can get to mundane task of dusting furniture.

Don’t forget to clean invisible areas

You’ve already completed preliminary steps of preparing your property for sale. Why, is there something more, you may ask. You packed, you cleaned and now what. Well, actually more cleaning. Let’s say you’ve hired aforementioned Kamila house cleaning in Elmwood Park. They did general cleaning, scrubbed bathroom and kitchen and dusted crucial areas. At first glimpse, everything already looks nice and tidy. But there still may be a lot of nasties lurking in the corners. Oven, microwave, refrigerator, washing machine or dryer are the appliances particularly prone to collecting residues, be it food, grease, washing powder or lint. How they look, may influence the impression your house makes on the potential buyer and not necessarily in the way you want. That’s why it’s so important to clean your household equipment thoroughly in and out. The same goes for cupboards as well. Ok, new would-be-owner comes to your house to see it’s condition and layout not to snoop around in search of some forgotten dust mite like a Perfect Housewife. Well, yes and no. He or she may want to check the capacity of appliances or storage potential of cupboards and simply open them to have a peek inside. So definitely, they should be scrubbed. After completing that part of tidying up your house, the team may move to clean under and behind the furniture. It’s a good moment as well to check, whether you actually packed all of the things that should go to storage (like for example shoes or children toys) or throw away some missed rubbish. Last but not least, ensure that all of the storage closets or cubbyholes under the stairs are empty and clean. After that, there is vacuuming and floor washing. Your house is now sparkling clean and almost ready to receive potential buyers.

Check twice if you need mold removal

Mold has gotten a lot of bad rap recently. Ok, nowadays we use the word quite feely to encompass all of the strains and species of those fungi. Yup, we are prone to lump similar things together if they seem similar. Unfortunately, when it comes to health some of the mold species are quite innocuous, others (black mold) – not so and might be particularly dangerous to young children, elders, asthmatics or people with immunodeficiency disorders. That said, potential house buyers keep a keen eye (and nose) for any trace of mold presence and you should as well. Musty smell and / or black spots on the walls or ceilings are good indicators that your property has such a problem. In addition, neither of them increases curb appeal of your house. Actually quite the contrary. Mold is a pretty good deterrent for a potential buyer. Let’s face it - it looks gross and smells awfully but that’s only a part of the problem. There is a popular notion (sometimes justified) that mold may indicate other problems with overall condition of your property like insufficient ventilation for example. So quick mold removal is a must. Sounds, pretty easy, huh? Umm, not really. Remember, there isn’t one Mold. There are plenty of its species, some quite dangerous and others not so. Theoretically, you could get rid of that harmless mold by yourself just using bottle of bleach and some scrubbing (and a bit of paint afterwards). However, there is one but very important caveat to that solution. You won’t be able to determine just by sight or smell, which is which. It can be only done with laboratory testing. You may either risk your health and stick to “do-it yourself” approach or find a professional company who performs mold inspection in Chicago (highly recommended). Just to be on the safe it’s worth to have mold inspection done even if you cannot see or smell it. It’s presence may be concealed for a time being by construction elements of your house like drywalls or insulation. Ok, you may ask, so how professional mold inspection looks like. Well, it starts with thorough visual check of your house, including attic and any other areas that may show signs of water damage or leaking. Thermal imaging camera and moisture meter may be used to find all of the sources of potential mold problem. Then inspector collects samples both of the indoor air (to test for elevated spores count) and from suspected surfaces. After doing laboratory testing, determining the extent of your mold problem and pinpointing problematic areas, it’s time for mold removal. As mentioned before, it’s better to leave that job for experts instead of doing it yourself. There are two main reasons. First - they have appropriate personal protective equipment to minimize health risks, linked to mold exposition. Second – upon completing mold removal, they can make a clearance test to ensure that your problem has been solved.

Do some laundry

Sometimes, before selling a house you take all of your personal belongings (clothing, books, trinkets but furniture and bedding as well). However, at other times you decide on leaving some items behind. A king-size bed or a large chest of drawers may don’t fit in your new place and there is no reason to sell this pieces separately. Or you want to decorate new house in a completely different style. Whatever the reason, remember to leave all those things nice and tidy. Yeah, I know you’ve probably already completed top to bottom house cleaning so my point seem moot. But take a look once again. What do you see? Mattresses, covers, pillows, drapes or rugs do collect dust and cannot be simply wiped cleaned. The best way to make them pristine and fresh for new owners is dry cleaning. Such services pop up like mushrooms so you won’t have a problem with finding one. However, you may want to consider simply calling Aloha Dry Cleaners in Lake Zurich. What’s so special about them? Speaking from experience, I can say that they offer high quality services, which don’t drain my budget. I know that these are very important characteristics for a potential client but actually it’s not Aloha’s unique selling. Nevertheless, I consider their offer far superior than that of similar businesses solely due to convenience. You don’t have to lug your mattresses, bedcovers and so on to the dry cleaners as they simply come to you. Well, they won’t do the cleaning on your premises but here is how it works. You contact with the Aloha to determine the details of yours service. In return, they send you information about laundry pick-up day and time in your area. Actually, you don’t even have to be at home. It’s enough if you leave your laundry in a special bag (provided by a company) at your doorstep. Guys will take your things for a thorough dry cleaning and bring them back fresh and crisp within few days right to your door. As I mentioned before, they have very customer friendly price list. But even I had to pay extra (which fortunately is not the case :) ), I would still do this, considering the exceptional convenience of the service. So, things packed, house tidied, mold removed and mattresses and co. dry cleaned. Congratulations, your house is ready for potential buyers.