My lease is ending on a house I’ve just moved out of. Our lease stipulates that we must have the carpets professionally cleaned. I’ve hired a local company to come clean it, but I have a few questions. I have moved everything out of the house, and pre-vacuumed, so it should be a fairly easy job. There are no stairs or hallways, just one living room and 3 bedrooms. Is it customary to tip them? Also, is it acceptable to run errands while they are cleaning? I don’t want to be underfoot, and it there isn’t really any where for me to go while they do their job. I have some trash that needs to be taken to the dumpster, and another errand or two that I could be finishing. It’s not like there is anything left in the house to steal.
Any advice based on previous experiences?
Thanks for your help! 🙂
This is the first time my landlord has rented a house, so she has as little experience with this sort of thing as I do. She also doesn’t live in the area, so contracting a carpet cleaning company herself is a little out of the box.
I find it odd that the landlord/management company didn’t have a pricelist for having it cleaned by them. At the complex I worked at our leases stipulated the sam thing, but we always provided the rentor with the price list… mainly to show them that it was cheaper to have us do it since we have agreements with the major companies in the area. For example, a 1 bedroom apt, we’d take $75 out of the security deposit to clean the carpets. Or the tenant could pay for their own carpet cleaning (approx 260$ for the same 1 bedroom apt) and receive their entire security deposit back. But to answer your actual question, it is not normally customary to tip them. And they usually prefer that you are out of the way, and you really shouldn’t go back in for a few hours to a day so that the carpet can fully dry.
I think it would be fine to leave while they are cleaning. Just be there when they first show up and mention you have some stuff to go do but tell them you’ll be back. I would not tip but I’m ungenerous like that.