Move-In Kitchen Cleaning: Where to Start Before You Put Dishes Away

That Cleaning Girl · Move-In / Move-Out

The kitchen is the room you will use the most, and the room where it matters most who touched what before you. Food, dishes and little hands all end up in contact with these surfaces. If you cleaned a new build, the last article, Cleaning a Newly Built Home Before You Move In, covered the construction side. This one works for any kitchen, new or old.

The goal is simple. Before a single plate goes in a cabinet, every place a plate could touch should be clean and dry.

Start with the fridge

Plug in or turn on the fridge first if it was off, so it has time to cool. Then clean it while it chills.

• Take out shelves and drawers and wash them in warm soapy water.
• Wipe the walls, ceiling and floor of the fridge and freezer.
• Clean the door shelves and the rubber seal, folds and all.
• Wipe the top, handles and the front.
• Check the water filter if it has one, and note when it may need replacing.

Once it is cold, groceries can go in right away, which is one less thing to worry about on moving day.

Then every cabinet and drawer

Cabinets are where your dishes, glasses and food live, so they come next. Work top to bottom. Vacuum crumbs and dust from corners, wipe with warm soapy water and dry with a clean towel. Pay extra attention to the cabinets on either side of the stove, which pick up grease, and the cabinet under the sink, which often has drips or old stains.

If you plan to use shelf liner, now is the time to put it down, before anything goes on the shelves. Let everything dry first.

Oven, stovetop and range hood

You may not cook the first night, but clean the oven early in the process anyway. A baking soda paste can sit for hours while you do other things. Clean the stovetop and burner grates, degrease the range hood filter and wipe the underside of the hood. If the oven has years of buildup, it may take more than one round, so do not leave it until the end.

Dishwasher and sink

Pull the dishwasher filter and clean it, wipe the door gasket and edges, and run an empty cycle with a cup of vinegar on the top rack. That clears out the previous household's residue before your dishes go in.

Scrub the sink, the faucet and the area around the base where grime builds up. In much of North Texas, hard water leaves a white crust around faucets and the aerator. A vinegar-soaked cloth wrapped around the faucet for a while softens it so it wipes away.

If there is a disposal, run it with ice cubes and a little dish soap, then wipe the rubber flap underneath, which is often grimy.

The gaps nobody thinks about

Every kitchen has narrow gaps where crumbs disappear: between the stove and the counter, beside the fridge and under the toe kick of the lower cabinets. If you can safely slide the stove or fridge out, clean behind them. If not, a long, thin brush or a vacuum crevice tool reaches most of the way in.

Also wipe the microwave inside and out, light switches, the pantry shelves and the backsplash, especially behind the stove and sink.

Unpack in a smart order

Once the kitchen is clean and dry, unpack the essentials first: a few plates, cups, a pan and the coffee maker. Wipe dishes if they got dusty in the moving boxes. Then add the rest over the next few days. You will figure out where things belong as you cook, and you are not rushing to cram everything into cabinets on the first night.

A simple trick: keep a "first night" box separate from the rest. Paper towels, dish soap, a sponge, a trash bag, a pot, a knife, a few plates and cups, and coffee. Put it in your car instead of the truck so you know exactly where it is when you walk in the door.

A note on shared or rented kitchens

If you are renting, keep photos of the kitchen as you found it, especially the oven and fridge. It helps later at move-out. Plenty of renters around Arlington and Grand Prairie move every year or two, and a few photos taken on day one can save a lot of back and forth later.

The first meal in a clean kitchen

There is something satisfying about cooking the first meal in a new home, even if it is just frozen pizza, and knowing everything around you is clean. For the rest of the house, see our move-in and move-out cleaning services.