An empty house hides nothing. Every cabinet interior, closet shelf, and appliance that was invisible under your furniture is suddenly the first thing an inspector sees, which is why a move-out clean is a completely different job from a good weekly visit.
Start inside the cabinets and drawers. Crumbs, liner residue, and the sticky ring under where the oil bottle lived are the single most common deduction, and they take minutes to fix while the kitchen is empty. Do the same for closet shelves and the tops of built-ins.
The oven and range hood are next. Degreaser needs dwell time to work, so spray them first and come back rather than scrubbing immediately. Pull the refrigerator drawers out and wash them in the sink; wiping them in place always misses the corners.
Then the parts nobody thinks of: baseboards, door frames, switch plates, vent covers, and the interior window glass with its tracks. Tracks in particular are where inspectors run a finger, and where a house that looks clean loses points.
Floors go last, always. Cleaning the floors before the dust from everything else has settled means doing them twice. And if the carpet has visible traffic lanes, extraction is usually cheaper than the carpet-replacement charge a landlord will pass along instead.
