End of Tenancy Cleaning in Tower Hill

Goodman's Fields is one of those developments where the lobby has marble on the floor and a concierge desk with two people behind it and a screen showing the weather and the time in three cities. The kind of place where you sign in before you go upstairs and sign out when you leave and the goods lift has a padded interior because everything that goes up and down it costs more than the lift. We signed in. We took the goods lift to the 14th floor. The padding had a small scuff from someone else's move.

Two bedrooms, an open-plan kitchen-living room with floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony, two bathrooms, and a hallway. The flat faced south and the view from the 14th floor included the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and the river. On a clear day you could see past Bermondsey to the hills of South London. On a working day in March you could see the cranes and the traffic on the bridge and the tourists below who looked like ants. About 800 sqft. Furnished — a sofa, a dining table for four, a bed in each room, a desk, bedside tables. The furniture was the landlord's, selected for the corporate market — clean lines, grey fabrics, the kind of thing that looks good in a brochure and wipes clean in practice. £3,200 a month.

The tenant was an Australian banker who'd been on a 12-month contract in the City. He'd walked to work every morning — about 15 minutes to his desk. He'd lived alone, cooked about twice a week, and the flat had the look of somewhere that was slept in regularly and occupied rarely. Managed by Chase Evans from their City & Aldgate office.

Pre-booked the goods lift for 9am. Pre-booked a basement parking space. Carried the kit from the van to the lift to the door in about 4 minutes. That's one of the advantages of development cleans — the logistics are handled and the access is smooth.

Kitchen first. One wall of the open-plan space. Integrated Siemens oven, induction hob, integrated fridge-freezer, integrated dishwasher, integrated washer-dryer. Twelve months of a man who cooked twice a week and had his breakfast at his desk. The oven was light — the faintest grease layer from a year of occasional roasting. Single dwell, one pass, 8 minutes. Hob — induction, barely marked. One coffee ring. Cleaned. Quartz worktop wiped. Dishwasher interior cleaned, seal wiped — the seal had a faint mould bloom from infrequent use, which is what happens when a dishwasher runs once a week and the door stays closed between cycles. Treated. Fridge-freezer cleaned — half empty. Inside all the cupboards. Floor — engineered oak — mopped with specialist product. Kitchen total: 20 minutes.

The open-plan living area. Floor-to-ceiling windows — two panels, each about 2.5 metres tall and 1.5 metres wide. South-facing. The 14th-floor light poured through them and showed every mark on the glass — condensation streaks from the temperature differential between the heated flat and the cold outside, a few fingerprints at handle height, and the general haze of 12 months of London air on the inside surface. Each panel cleaned full height. A step for the top section. The second pass was for the light, not the dirt. 12 minutes on the glass.

The balcony. Glass balustrade — descaled on the inside face where rain splash and condensation had built a faint film. Floor — composite decking — swept and wiped. Sliding door track — cleaned. 6 minutes.

The furniture: sofa vacuumed, under the cushions — nothing. This was the second flat in the collection where nothing was found under the sofa cushions. A corporate tenant who lived alone and didn't drop things. Dining table wiped. Desk wiped. 8 minutes.

Engineered floor throughout the living area — mopped. 4 minutes.

Two bathrooms. En-suite: walk-in shower with frameless glass and matt-black fittings, wall-hung basin with a matt-black tap, wall-hung toilet. The matt-black fittings were the challenge. Standard descaler would strip the coating. Citric-acid descaler, tested first on the underside of the shower riser where a mark wouldn't show. Safe. Applied to all fittings. Light limescale — 12 months of single use. One pass. Shower glass: light haze, single descaler pass. Floor — large-format tiles — mopped. 16 minutes.

Main bathroom: bath with a chrome thermostatic shower over and a glass screen, wall-hung basin, wall-hung toilet. All chrome — standard descaler, standard treatment. Light limescale. The bath had no waterline to speak of — he'd used the en-suite shower. Bath wiped anyway. 12 minutes.

Two bedrooms. Master: carpeted, vacuumed. Floor-to-ceiling window — same height, same cleaning routine, but north-facing and less punishing on the light. Built-in wardrobe wiped inside — one shelf had a single wire hanger. The hanger was the tenant's. Left on the kitchen counter. 10 minutes. Second bedroom: used as a home office. Carpeted, vacuumed. Window cleaned. Desk — the landlord's — wiped. A small scratch on the desk surface from a laptop being slid across it repeatedly. In the desk surface, not on it. Documented. 8 minutes.

Hallway: engineered floor mopped. Front door wiped. 3 minutes.

Total time: 3 hours. Two people. An 800 sqft furnished apartment on the 14th floor of a concierge development where the oven took 8 minutes, the floor-to-ceiling glass took 30 minutes across the whole flat, the matt-black fittings needed a different descaler, and the only thing left behind was a wire hanger. The view of Tower Bridge from the living room was the kind of thing people come to London for. The flat was the kind of thing they leave London from. Twelve months, one suitcase in, one suitcase out, and a hanger that didn't make it into the bag.

Chase Evans' negotiator arrived the next day. He had a tablet with the check-in photos from 12 months earlier and a digital inventory linked to the development's property management system. He came up in the residents' lift, not the goods lift, which told us he had a fob and he'd been in this building before.

Living area: floor-to-ceiling glass — he stood at the centre of the room and looked at both panels. Clean — no condensation streaks, no haze. He didn't walk up to the glass. He could see from the centre of the room that the light was coming through evenly. Engineered floor: he looked across it from the hallway. Even sheen.

Kitchen: oven opened, phone torch in. Clean. Quartz: hand-tested. Clean. Dishwasher: he opened it, looked at the seal. Clean — no mould. That's a check he'd learned to do because the infrequent-use mould bloom is specific to the corporate lets where the tenant runs the dishwasher once a week.

Balcony: glass balustrade checked from inside — clean. He didn't go out onto the balcony. He could see the balustrade glass from the living room.

En-suite: matt-black shower riser — he ran a finger down it. No descaler damage, no watermarks. Clean. That's the matt-black check. Every agent who manages buildings with matt-black fittings knows that the wrong descaler strips the coating, and they check the riser first because that's where the damage shows.

Second bedroom: desk scratch compared to check-in photo. At check-in the desk had been new. The scratch was 12 months of laptop use. He photographed it. Noted as wear.

The hanger was on the kitchen counter. He didn't note it. Some things are too small and too specific to a man who packed a suitcase and caught a flight to Sydney.

Eight minutes. Everything passed. The desk scratch noted as wear. Report filed through the development's system before he left the building.

Deposit returned in full within 10 days. The Australian went home. The flat on the 14th floor of Goodman's Fields was cleaned, rephotographed, and re-listed within the week. The next tenant would arrive with a suitcase and a 12-month contract and would stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows on their first evening and look at Tower Bridge lit up at night and the river moving beneath it and think this is what living in London is supposed to feel like. And they'd be right, for 12 months, until the contract ended and the suitcase came out again and the goods lift took them down to the lobby and the concierge said goodbye and the padded lift waited for the next one.