End of Tenancy Cleaning in Aldgate

An 18th-floor apartment at Goodman's Fields — the Galliard development between Aldgate station and Tower Hill, close enough to the Gherkin that on a clear day the building's shadow crosses the balcony in the late afternoon. Two bedrooms, an open-plan kitchen-living room with floor-to-ceiling glass facing north toward the City skyline, two bathrooms, a balcony, and a hallway. The tenant — an equity analyst at a firm in Bishopsgate — had been there 16 months on a furnished corporate let at £3,200/month. She'd already relocated to New York. The keys were with Galliard's on-site management office.

Collected the keys from the Goodman's Fields lobby at 9am. Concierge cleared, goods lift booked, underground parking confirmed. Up to the 18th floor with the full kit. The apartment was furnished: a sofa, a dining table, a bed in each room, bedside tables, a desk in the second bedroom. All the landlord's — all staying, all needing to be cleaned around and under.

The glass was the first priority. The north-facing wall of the living area was a continuous run of floor-to-ceiling glass — about 8 metres — overlooking the City. The Gherkin, the Walkie-Talkie, the Leadenhall Building, and a dozen cranes still building the next generation of City towers. Every fingerprint, every streak showed against that skyline. Professional glass cleaner, vertical-strip technique, squeegee finish — worked in sections of about 1.5 metres. The balcony door and the balcony glass done the same way. Total glass time in the living area: 25 minutes. Both bedrooms had full-height windows — another 15 minutes combined.

The kitchen occupied one wall of the open-plan space. Integrated Miele throughout: oven behind a handleless push-to-open door, induction hob set into a quartz island. The tenant had been a weeknight-takeaway, weekend-cooking type — the oven was lightly used. Single dwell, 15 minutes, one pass. The induction hob: specialist ceramic product, no marks. Quartz worktops: pH-neutral, wiped dry. Integrated fridge-freezer: shelves wiped, gaskets cleaned — the fridge was immaculate, the tenant had emptied and wiped it before leaving. Dishwasher: interior wiped, filter checked. Extractor: flush-ceiling unit, filter soaked, housing wiped. Engineered oak flooring — wide-plank, lacquered — mopped with specialist product.

The furniture added time throughout. The sofa: vacuumed with the brush attachment — under the cushions (crumbs, a hair clip, a pen lid), the arms, the back. The dining table: wiped top and underneath, the legs wiped, the floor beneath mopped. In each bedroom: the bed frame wiped, underneath vacuumed (the universal under-bed archaeology of dust and a stray sock), the mattress surface vacuumed, the bedside tables wiped including drawer interiors. The desk in the second bedroom: surface wiped, cable area behind vacuumed, the drawer emptied of a forgotten USB stick and a Post-it note reading 'CALL TOKYO' — presumably no longer urgent.

Two bathrooms. The en-suite: a walk-in shower with a frameless glass panel, wall-hung basin, wall-hung toilet, heated towel rail. Descaler on the glass — 10-minute dwell, vertical strips, squeegeed. Light limescale only — the tenant had maintained it. Wall-hung fixtures checked underneath. Chrome polished dry. 20 minutes. The main bathroom: a shower cubicle with a sliding door, basin on a vanity, toilet. The sliding door track descaled — same technique as Bracknell and Cockfosters. Basin and toilet done. 18 minutes.

The hallway — engineered flooring, mopped. The front door: wiped inside. Entry-phone panel: wiped. A coat cupboard: interior wiped — empty except for a single wire hanger and a Deliveroo receipt from 8 months ago.

Total time: 4 hours. Two people. A furnished 2-bed tower apartment with 8 metres of City-facing glass, integrated Miele appliances, and the particular cleaning profile of a corporate tenant who ate well at weekends and ordered in during the week. The furniture added about 40 minutes to what an unfurnished apartment of the same size would have taken. The glass took 40 minutes across the flat. The oven was the lightest we'd seen that month — the equity analyst's contribution to our schedule.

Galliard's on-site negotiator inspected the following morning — tablet, check-in photographs, the same-day digital checkout that Goodman's Fields runs as standard. Living-room glass: she stood at three points along the window wall and checked for streaks against the City skyline. Clear. She held her phone torch against two panes — nothing. Kitchen: oven opened (torch), induction hob checked at angle, quartz island finger-tested. Furniture: she checked the sofa arms, looked under the dining table, opened the desk drawer (the USB stick and the Post-it were on the kitchen island, left for the tenant to collect via the management office). Bathrooms: shower glass angle-tested in both, sliding door track crouched-and-checked. Floors: walked in socks.

All items passed. Report uploaded to the management portal within the hour. Deposit returned in full within 7 days. The analyst received the confirmation in her new apartment in Tribeca, forwarded it to her company's relocation department, and that was Aldgate done.

That's the tower end of E1. Ten minutes' walk toward Whitechapel, someone is cleaning a gas oven in a Victorian conversion where the bathroom was carved from a hallway and the checkout happens on a landlord's phone. We do both. Different products, different access, different price — same principle: every surface done, nothing missed.