I am just wondering about this because I will be moving off post next week and I have been cleaning my house very well but everyone keeps telling me not to waste my energy because they will always find ways to charge you the cleaning fee. I am now wondering if I should continue to waste my time if they are just going to screw me over anyway. So have any of you cleaned your own house and walked away without the housing office bending you over? 

If it is not up to their standards you can just keep cleaning until they approve it.

Just make sure you clean window sills, and every nook and cranny, blinds, scuff marks, and anything wrong with the walls, baseboards etc. 

You better by some stock in K.Y.

On a more serious note.. I've known people who have cleared with no issue and did minimal cleaning.. Then there were those that scrubbed their hineys off and got charged some fee.. I think it depends on who does the final inspection and whether or not they are having a bad day..

May I suggest cleaning your butt off and taking pictures of all the rooms, walls, appliances, blinds, inner and outter workings of the home.. Just in case they do try and charge you some outrageous fee. Or ask them to come out a day or two before you come out to point out anything that you may have 'missed' in their eyes.. Just tell them you wanna make sure you do it right. 

$320 is expensive. I never lived in post housing around here, but we cleared from Ft Drum and I paid the cleaning crew $225 to do it all. Up there you had to strip the floors, so they could rewax them for the next family to move in and I was not about to do all that by myself. I did make sure when I moved in to mark every mark and anything that was damaged at the time and that saved me some money. They pulled up all the things that were there when I moved in and had a bunch of charges. I whipped out my copy of the walk through document and they removed all the charges except for one blind. The stick was broke on it lol. 

I paid the cleaning crew $225

Ive heard rumor around here that even if you pay the cleaning crew they recommend,that still isnt a guarantee you wont be charged in the end.. But I dont know if thats from families who have completely destroyed carpets and put holes in the walls.. Everyones experience is always different. 

I heard that same exact thing. I even heard of people paying and the cleaning crew failed to get the place clean for approval. 

I have been hearing the same things from others, for the most part. I was just hopeful that there were actually people out there that didn't get bent over from housing.

They want the floors to be stripped here also.

Thank you for the suggestions and comments. 

I would just bend on over and be done with it lol. 

LOL that is probably the best choice at this point...I give up **grabbing ankles now** ;) 

We only paid 180$ if i dont remember wrong and that was with replacing blinds and repainting, i might be wrong tho but im pretty sure 

a good way to clean your home is use floor stripper to clean everything. even tho it strips wax off the floor, it will clean everything and make it look new. i believe that lowe's has stripper. use about 1/2 and 1/2 instead of the instruction on mixing. make sure you rinse with a wet rag. i know this because i own a janitoral business. 

Ive heard rumor around here that even if you pay the cleaning crew they recommend,that still isnt a guarantee you wont be charged in the end.. But I dont know if thats from families who have completely destroyed carpets and put holes in the walls.. Everyones experience is always different.


i will squash that rumor for you. The cleaning crew that housing uses is contracted with housing and is ONLY allowed to work for housing. I had a friend who inquired about that when their neighbor moved out and the lady told her they were not allowed to do just be hired by some random people.

Now at Bragg when i lived there if you hired their cleaning crew and showed a receipt they wouldn't charge you for cleaning. Since they have carpet too if you showed a receipt for carpet cleaning even if they couldn't remove a stain they wouldn't charge you. 

I JUST moved out. I paid the cleaning fee. You should go to the move out workshop, they explained a lot. My husband went, since I stayed home with the kids. The cleaning fee covers everything NOT above and beyond normal cleaning, the lady said she cleans under her stove and fridge once a month, I call BS, but I cleaned everything and painted everything. We got charged for two blinds, and that was all. They are charging for painting now too, and if your yard isn't "grassed" over a certain percentage, you will be charged for that. We had a MUD PIT out back, but a couple month prior, we seeded it and had a nice yard by the time move out came around. Good luck, I forgot who we had, but we exchanged "I love you's" at the end and everything, apparently a lot of people have different views as to what "really cleaning" is. Oh, and make sure you have your trash GONE, that is a pet peeve of theirs! Good luck! I was stressing like crazy, but as long as you are sweet, I think you'll be fine, I was, it wasn't as bad a people make it out to be. Take care! :) 

We lived there for a little over three years, and we didn't get charged for painting. So, if you lived there a good amount of time, you shouldn't get charged! I also had a lot of fun with the pint of "touch up paint" they give you! Does a lot for those corners that seem to chip like crazy...