Landlords walk the same loop at almost every move-out inspection: appliances first — inside the oven and the refrigerator — then bathrooms, then floors and baseboards, then walls, doors, and fixtures, and finally everything that opens: cabinets, drawers, and closets. Florida law then puts what happens next on a clock: 15 days to return your deposit, 30 to claim against it.
That loop isn’t a trade secret. Our own move-out cleaning page says it in its FAQ: the service addresses “the items landlords check most — the kitchen, bathrooms, empty cabinet and drawer interiors, reachable surfaces, and spot-cleaning of wall scuffs.” Our crews clean toward these walkthroughs every week — end-of-month dates fill first because most leases turn over then, as that same page publishes — so here is the walk, stop by stop, and then the clock that starts when it ends.
The walk-order, stop by stop
The order has an economic logic: the inspection starts where cleaning costs the most hours and ends where a glance settles it.
1. Appliances — the oven and the refrigerator first
The oven door gets opened before anything else: baked-on carbon on the oven floor, grease on the racks, yellow film on the hood. In the refrigerator, the door gaskets, the shelf glass, the crisper drawers. It’s stop one because it’s the slowest dirt in the unit to remove — hours of hand work — which makes it the place a cleaning deduction gets decided first. An honest scope note: the published move-out clean covers appliance exteriors and the microwave inside and outside; the two famous interiors are separate lines — empty refrigerator $49, inside oven $49, or $89 for the oven + refrigerator bundle, on our Miami-Dade rates.
2. Bathrooms
Stop two: soap scum on the shower glass, hard-water spotting on the fixtures, the grout lines, the toilet base and what’s behind it. Miami’s hard water leaves white scale on chrome and glass, and an inspector’s eye goes straight to it. “Complete bathrooms” sit inside the published 38-item list. One distinction worth knowing before the walkthrough: film on the glass cleans off; etching the hard water left in the glass is wear — it is the surface itself, not something sitting on it.
3. Floors and baseboards
An empty unit reveals the ghost rectangles: dust outlining where every piece of furniture stood, gray lines along the baseboards, corners the vacuum never reached while the home was furnished. That’s why this stop only cleans well after the last piece of furniture leaves — floors vacuumed and mopped, baseboards, and cobwebs are all in the published scope. A drag scratch in the wood, on the other hand, is a repair conversation, not a cleaning one.
4. Walls, doors, and fixtures
Scuffs at furniture height, fingerprints around switches and handles, the nail holes, light fixtures with a season of insects collected in the tray. The published list covers doors, handles, and switches, and wall scuffs are spot-cleaned — the page’s own wording. Patching, painting, and replacing parts are repair work a cleaning visit does not do, and saying so up front beats discovering it afterward.
5. Everything that opens
The last pass runs on hinges: every cabinet, every drawer, every closet. Crumbs in the kitchen drawers, the closet floor, the high shelf nobody emptied. Empty cabinet, drawer, closet, and shelf interiors are included when reachable — and they only count empty, which is the operational reason the clean belongs after the last box and before the walkthrough. The same list read from the arriving side is the move-in cleaning: your landlord’s next walkthrough is somebody else’s move-in.
The clock behind the clipboard: Florida’s deposit timeline
What the landlord writes down on that walk then runs against deadlines set by law. Florida Statute 83.49 — the security-deposit section of the state’s landlord-tenant law — publishes the calendar, and it runs in both directions:
- No claim: 15 days. If the landlord doesn’t intend to keep any of it, the statute gives them 15 days from when you leave to return the deposit.
- With a claim: 30 days, by certified mail. To keep any portion, the statute requires written notice within 30 days, sent by certified mail to your last known mailing address, stating how much they intend to keep and why.
- No notice sent: the claim is forfeited. The statute says a landlord who doesn’t give that notice within 30 days forfeits the right to impose a claim on the deposit — though it leaves other legal routes open to both sides.
- Your side: 15 days to object. Once the notice arrives, the statute gives you 15 days to object to the claim in writing.
The practical consequence is simple: leave a forwarding address in writing when you hand over the keys — the statute’s whole mechanism assumes one exists. And the mandatory honesty: we are a cleaning company, not a law firm. This is the statute’s own published calendar, summarized in good faith; it is not legal advice, and a dispute over a specific deduction belongs with a qualified attorney. If your question comes one step earlier — whether a cleaning charge can be deducted from a deposit at all, and where dirt ends and wear begins — we’ve made that argument separately in can a landlord deduct cleaning costs from your deposit.
Questions about your place specifically? No need to finish the article — call, text, WhatsApp, or email us and we’ll take it from here.
What a move-out clean does about that list
The JAS move-out clean is built against exactly that walk, and its published scope reads like the loop in order: surfaces, sink, cabinet and appliance exteriors, microwave inside and outside, bathrooms, empty cabinet, drawer, closet and shelf interiors, doors, handles, switches, baseboards, cobwebs, and floors. Starting at $409, over a 5–7 hour visit with a 2–3 person team. Where that scope stops — and which jobs are priced separately as add-ons — is covered item by item in what’s included in a move-out cleaning.
The part that talks directly to the statute’s clock is the record: the same page publishes “38 items + full photo archive PDF” with “one-tap forward to landlord,” and eligible completed visits include a CleanCheck photo report. If a claim notice arrives by certified mail in week four, a photo archive dated handoff day exists — forwarded to the landlord before the walkthrough, if you chose to. It is a record, not a magic proof, and the ceiling on this whole section is the page’s own published sentence: the deposit decision itself always rests with your landlord.
FAQ
Do I really need the oven and refrigerator add-ons if the appliances look fine?
Open both doors and look the way an inspector would: oven floor and racks, fridge gaskets and shelf glass. If what you see wipes off in a minute, skip the add-ons. If it doesn’t, those two interiors are priced separately — empty refrigerator $49, inside oven $49, or $89 for the bundle, on our Miami-Dade rates — because they are the slowest dirt in the unit to remove.
When should the cleaning happen relative to the final walkthrough?
After the last box is out and before the walkthrough — that is the published guidance, because the empty-interior items only count when the cabinets and closets are actually empty. Booking needs at least 24–48 hours of lead time, and end-of-month dates fill first because most leases turn over then, so book as soon as the walkthrough date is set.
What if the landlord never sends a claim notice within 30 days?
Florida Statute 83.49 says a landlord who does not give the written claim notice within 30 days forfeits the right to impose a claim on the deposit — though the statute still leaves other legal routes open to both sides. We are a cleaning company, not a law firm: that is the statute’s own published timeline, and what it means for your specific lease is a question for a qualified attorney.