Apartment cleaning checklist: room by room, for renters and cleaning pros

The apartment cleaning checklist, room by room

A regular apartment clean covers five areas: the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, the living area and the entry. The list below has 34 tasks, in the order a cleaner walks through the apartment, and works for a studio, a 1-bedroom or a 2-bedroom.

It is the same standard clean list that the free checklist maker prints and that BroomBook’s crew app loads, so it is built for cleaning businesses. It works just as well as a weekly apartment cleaning checklist for a tenant who cleans their own place. Repeat the bathroom and bedroom sections for each one in the apartment. In a studio, the bedroom section is the sleeping corner of the main room.

Finish every apartment clean the same way, before you leave:

• Walk through every room once more for missed spots.
• Take the trash and recycling out the way the building asks: down the chute, to the trash room, or to the bins outside.
• Turn off lights and fans, and lock the door. Leave the key exactly as agreed.

If the apartment has a washer and dryer, add a laundry section: wipe the tops and fronts and clean the dryer lint trap. Need more detail on one room? The kitchen cleaning checklist and the bathroom cleaning checklist go deeper on the two rooms that take the most time.

What’s different about cleaning an apartment?

The tasks are the same as in a house, but the setting is not. An apartment is a small space with shared walls, inside a building with its own rules about noise, trash, parking and who can come in.

Small spaces hold moisture and fumes

A small bathroom with no window fills with steam and product fumes quickly. The EPA’s guide to mold, moisture and your home says to run the bathroom fan or open a window when showering, and to keep indoor humidity below 60 percent, ideally between 30 and 50 percent. For a cleaner, that means running the exhaust fan while you work and leaving the shower and floor dry. The CDC’s advice on cleaning safely with bleach is to open windows and doors when using products indoors, and never to mix bleach with ammonia or any other cleaner. In a windowless bathroom, use one product at a time and step out between steps.

Shared walls and building rules on noise and hours

Neighbors hear the vacuum through the wall and the floor. Many buildings set quiet hours, and some limit when contractors can work at all. Ask the client for the building’s rules before you book, and schedule vacuuming for the middle of the day rather than first thing in the morning.

Trash chutes and recycling rooms

Many buildings have a trash chute on each floor and a separate place for recycling and large items. Chutes usually take only bagged trash, and boxes or bulky items go elsewhere. Follow the signs posted by the chute, and ask the client where recycling goes in their building.

Parking and access for cleaners

Street parking can be hard to find near apartment buildings, and a cleaner carrying a vacuum and a caddy may have a long walk. The cleaner may also need to get past a front door, a buzzer, a front desk or a locked elevator. These details decide whether the clean starts on time, so they belong on the booking, not in a text thread.

Laundry in the building

Many apartments share a laundry room, so there is no washer or dryer to clean. When there is one in the unit, clean the lint trap every visit: the U.S. Fire Administration lists failure to clean as the leading factor in home clothes dryer fires from 2018 to 2020.

Cleaning a studio apartment vs a 2-bedroom: what changes?

A studio apartment cleaning checklist is the same list with fewer rooms: one kitchen or kitchenette, one bathroom, and one main room that is both bedroom and living area. A 2-bedroom adds a second bedroom, often a second bathroom, and more floor to vacuum and mop.

Here is how the list changes by size:

• Studio: clean the kitchen and bathroom as usual, then treat the main room as one space. Make the bed, dust, tidy and wipe switches in the sleeping area, then do the living tasks in the rest of the room, and vacuum and mop it all in one pass toward the door.
• 1-bedroom: the full list, once each: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living area and entry.
• 2-bedroom: repeat the bedroom section for the second bedroom and the bathroom section for each bathroom. A half bath skips the shower and tub.

A studio is rarely half the work of a 2-bedroom. The kitchen and bathroom take most of the time on any clean, and a studio has both. Extra bedrooms add dusting, beds and floors, which go faster. If you run a cleaning business, time your own jobs by apartment size before you set prices, rather than scaling by bedroom count alone.

The free cleaning checklist maker prints one section per bedroom and bathroom, so you can set it to the exact apartment and hand the printout to the cleaner or the client.

Apartment cleaning tips: what order to clean a small space in

Start in the bathroom so products can sit, clean top to bottom and dry to wet, and work from the far end of the apartment toward the front door. In a small space, the order matters more, because there is nowhere to put the mess while you work.

1. Clear a path and gather trash. Collect trash from every room into one bag, and move dishes to the sink. A clear floor makes everything else faster.
2. Start the bathroom. Turn on the exhaust fan, apply cleaner to the toilet, shower and tub, and let it sit while you move on. Follow the contact time on the label.
3. Kitchen next. Load or wash dishes, then wipe counters, the backsplash, appliance fronts, the microwave and the stovetop. Clean the sink last, once the dirty dishes are out of it.
4. Bedroom and living area, top to bottom. Dust high surfaces first, then mirrors, switches and handles, then make the bed and straighten cushions.
5. Back to the bathroom. Scrub what has been soaking, clean the sink and mirror, and wipe the counters and faucets.
6. Floors last, toward the door. Vacuum every room first, then mop, starting at the far wall and finishing at the entry so you never walk on a wet floor.

A few more apartment cleaning tips that save time in a small space:

• Carry one caddy with everything in it. In a walk-up, a second trip down the stairs for a forgotten cloth costs minutes.
• Use a small, light vacuum. Apartments have tight corners and stairs, and a corded vacuum with a long cord reaches every room from one outlet.
• Keep separate cloths for the bathroom and the kitchen, in different colors, so nothing moves from the toilet to the counter.
• Dry the shower and leave the fan on for a while after you finish, so moisture does not sit in a small room.

How often should you clean an apartment?

Most apartments do well with the regular clean on this page every week or every other week, plus a deeper clean a few times a year. Kitchens and bathrooms need the most frequent attention because they get dirty fastest.

• Every week or two: the full checklist above, from counters and toilet to floors.
• Every few months: the detail work a regular clean skips, such as inside the oven and fridge, baseboards, blinds, vents and window tracks. The deep cleaning checklist lists every task.
• Between cleans: wipe the kitchen counters after cooking, run the bathroom fan after showers and take the trash out before it smells.

If you clean your own apartment, the free cleaning schedule maker spreads these tasks across the week, so no single day is a big job. If you run a cleaning business, offering weekly and every-other-week visits to apartment clients is the simplest way to fill a route, since many apartments sit close together.

Cleaning an apartment when you move out

Moving out of an apartment takes more than the regular list on this page. A move-out clean is done in an empty apartment and adds the inside of every cabinet, drawer, closet and appliance, plus the detail work of a deep clean.

Our move-out cleaning checklist covers the full list, how to document the clean with photos, and what a landlord can and cannot charge for. Use it instead of this page when the lease is ending.

Two apartment details to plan for: book the elevator if the building requires it for moves, and ask the building where large trash and boxes go, since they usually cannot go down the chute. Clean after the furniture is out, not before, so the floors and walls behind it get done.

What does a lease usually expect from a renter’s cleaning?

Most leases ask tenants to keep the apartment clean and sanitary while they live there, and to return it in the condition they received it, apart from normal wear and tear. The exact wording, and what a landlord can do about it, varies by lease and by state.

In general terms, here is what that tends to mean while you live there:

• Keep it clean enough not to cause damage. Grease build-up, mold from a bathroom that is never ventilated, or trash that attracts pests can become a repair, not just a mess.
• Report problems early. Leaks, mold that comes back after cleaning, and pests are usually the landlord’s to fix, but only once they know about them.
• Follow the building rules. Trash and recycling rules, quiet hours and rules about outside workers are often part of the lease or a set of building rules attached to it.
• Allow inspections. Some leases allow the landlord to inspect with notice. A regular clean means an inspection is never a scramble.

This is general information, not legal advice. Read your own lease, and check your state or city’s tenant rules for anything about deposits or deductions. Cleaning businesses should not promise a client that a clean will get their deposit back, since that is the landlord’s decision under the lease and state law.

How much does apartment cleaning cost?

Apartment cleaning usually costs less than cleaning a larger house, because there are fewer rooms and less floor. The price depends on the size of the apartment, the type of clean, how long since the last clean, and local rates.

For current numbers, see our house cleaning prices report, which breaks prices down by home size and type of clean, with a price floor for every state. If you run a cleaning business, the house cleaning price calculator turns your own labor cost, supplies and profit into a price for each apartment size and type of clean.

A deep clean of the same apartment usually takes about 1.6 to 2 times as long as a standard clean, according to our house cleaning pricing guide, so price it from those hours. Two apartment costs are easy to forget in a quote: paid parking or the time it takes to find a space, and the extra minutes for buzzers, front desks and elevators. Build them into the price for buildings you know are slow to get into.

Working in apartment buildings: tips for cleaning businesses

The clean itself is the easy part. What goes wrong in apartment buildings is getting in: the buzzer, the front desk, the key, the elevator and parking. Collect those details before the first visit and keep them with the client’s booking.

• Access. Ask how the cleaner gets into the building and the unit: a buzzer code, a front desk that needs the cleaner’s name, a key left with a doorman, or a lockbox. Some buildings do not allow lockboxes, so ask before you suggest one.
• Key handoff. Agree where the key is left and returned, in writing. Label keys with a code, never with the client’s address.
• Parking. Ask where the cleaner can park, whether the building has visitor or loading spaces, and whether a permit is needed. A parking ticket eats the profit on a small apartment.
• Elevators and stairs. Note whether the building has an elevator, whether it needs a key or fob, and how many flights a walk-up has. Pack a kit the cleaner can carry in one trip.
• Building rules. Quiet hours, contractor hours, where trash and recycling go, and whether the cleaner must sign in.
• Paperwork. Some apartment buildings and property managers ask for a certificate of insurance before a cleaning company works in their units. The cleaning business insurance guide explains what that is.

Buildings with many units are also a good place to grow. A happy client in one building can lead to neighbors in the same building, which means less driving between jobs.

How BroomBook handles apartment jobs

We make BroomBook, a scheduling and booking app for residential cleaning businesses. For apartment work, it keeps the access details and the checklist with the job, so the cleaner arrives knowing how to get in and what to clean.

• Access notes on the day. Access notes and door codes show only on the day of the visit, so the buzzer code is there when the cleaner needs it, not sitting in a phone all week.
• A private crew link, nothing to download. Each cleaner opens their jobs from a private link, and clocks in and out from the phone.
• The right checklist. Room-by-room checklists match the type of clean booked: standard, deep, move-out or Airbnb turnover. The standard list is the one on this page.
• Photos you can check. Each photo is checked against its checklist item, and the ones that need a look are flagged to you.
• Notes in each cleaner’s language. Job notes, such as “park in visitor spot 4” or “trash goes to the room by the elevator”, are translated into Spanish, French or Portuguese for each cleaner.

Pick something else if you clean office buildings or apartment common areas under janitorial contracts, need QuickBooks sync, or want an app from the app store: BroomBook is built for residential cleaning and has none of those. Otherwise, see all the features or try the demo.