End of Tenancy Cleaning in Upton

Plashet Grove runs north from Green Street toward Plashet Park, and the terraces on both sides have the compact frontages of houses built to fit as many families as possible onto a street that was fields 150 years ago. Bay windows, narrow front gardens with low brick walls, wheelie bins on the pavement, the faint smell of spices from the kitchen of the house two doors down where someone was already cooking at 9am. These houses weren't built for people who wanted space. They were built for people who needed somewhere to live near the docks. The docks are gone but the houses are doing the same job for different families.

Three bedrooms, a front reception, a rear kitchen extended into a single-storey addition, a bathroom squeezed upstairs between two of the bedrooms, and a small back garden. The family had been there 2 years — a couple with three children aged 13, 10, and 6. She worked at a primary school nearby. He drove a minicab. £1,850 a month. Managed by the landlord directly via OpenRent. The landlord lived in Ilford.

Parked on Plashet Grove via RingGo. Newham CPZ. Carried the kit in through the front door.

Kitchen first. The rear extension had given about 8 sqm total — bigger than the original kitchen would have been, but still compact. A freestanding gas cooker — a Beko, single oven, four burners. Two years of a household that cooked from scratch every day, multiple meals, for five people. This was the heaviest oven we'd had in Upton Park for a month. The oven wasn't just greased — it was layered. The kind of layering that comes from a cooker that never gets a day off. The bottom had a baked crust from trays of pilau and roasted vegetables. The roof was dark from the steam of boiling pots and simmering curries. The back wall was thick. Triple dwell on the cavity. Three passes on the roof. Two passes on the back wall. The grill pan was worse — soaked for the full kitchen clean and needed scrubbing after. Total oven time: 35 minutes.

Hob — four burner caps into the soak tray. Each one had a different colour of baked spill — turmeric yellow on one, dark brown from a boil-over on another, a treacle-like residue on a third. The hob surface itself had grease extending across the full width and the wall tiles behind had a film that went all the way to the ceiling because the extractor was a joke. Degreased. Worktops — laminate — wiped. Sink descaled — the tap had a thick collar. Double application. Fridge-freezer cleaned — full freezer, took 30 minutes to defrost while we worked. Inside all the cupboards. Under the sink: a carrier bag of carrier bags, three takeaway menus from Green Street, and a small tin of ghee that had been pushed to the back and forgotten. Floor — vinyl — mopped. Behind the cooker: pulled out, wall degreased heavily — this was a proper degreasing, not a wipe. A single bay leaf and a rubber band. Kitchen total: 52 minutes.

Front reception. Carpeted, vacuumed. Bay window — UPVC, cleaned. Gas fire in a tiled surround — wiped. Radiator done. 8 minutes.

Bathroom. Upstairs, between the front and rear bedrooms. A compact white suite — bath with an electric shower over and a plastic curtain, pedestal basin, close-coupled toilet. Two years of Newham hard water and a family of five. The shower head was heavily blocked — barely any water coming through the nozzles. Triple descaler application on the head alone. Bath waterline — thick and dark from the combination of hard water, bath products, and five people using it daily. Triple descaler on the bath, manual attention with a non-scratch pad around the entire ring. Taps — solid white crusts, the worst we'd seen in E7 this month. Double application. Toilet — heavy calcium below the waterline and in the back section. Proper soak, 15 minutes. Grout in the shower area: dark mould at the sealant line. Anti-mould spray, scrubbed. Most came off. A section of sealant was cracking and pulling away. Documented as maintenance. Floor — vinyl — mopped. 36 minutes. The longest bathroom in the collection relative to its size — about 3.5 sqm but 36 minutes because five people and hard water in a small space creates a concentration that bigger bathrooms don't.

Three bedrooms. Master — front bedroom, carpeted, vacuumed. UPVC bay window cleaned. 8 minutes. Second bedroom — the two older children's room. Carpet vacuumed. Window cleaned. A bunk bed against one wall — the landlord's. Wiped. Under the bunk: vacuumed. A single cricket ball. Not a tennis ball from Wimbledon-adjacent Southfields. A cricket ball from a household where cricket is the sport. 9 minutes. Third bedroom — the 6-year-old's room. Carpet vacuumed. Window cleaned. The wall beside the bed had a small patch of something at about 70cm. Investigated — dried mango. Cleaned with a damp cloth. Came off. Under the bed: a colouring book with about three pages used. Left on the kitchen counter. 8 minutes.

Stairs and hallway: carpeted, vacuumed. Front door wiped. 5 minutes.

Total time: 3 hours. Two people. A 3-bed Victorian terrace where the kitchen took 52 minutes because the oven had been used every day for two years by a family that cooks the way a lot of families in Upton Park cook — from scratch, with spices, with heat, and without the oven getting a day off. The bathroom took 36 minutes because five people and Newham hard water in 3.5 sqm creates limescale faster than any other combination in our coverage area. A house that costs a fraction of what the Holland Park flat costs and that needs more oven work and more bathroom work because the people who live in it use both of them harder.

The landlord arrived two days later. He drove from Ilford in a Toyota, which placed him firmly in the east London landlord category. He had a printed checklist, a phone torch, and a pair of reading glasses he put on to read the checklist. He'd owned the house for 12 years and rented it via OpenRent for the last 6.

Kitchen: oven opened, torch in. He looked at the roof for a long time. Clean. He knew this oven. He knew what it looked like at the start of every tenancy because he'd looked inside it at every checkout for 6 years. He checked the grill tray — clean. Tap base: touched. Smooth. The wall behind the hob: he looked at it and touched it. Clean. He looked surprised. He said 'that's the cleanest I've seen that wall.' Not because previous teams hadn't tried. Because this oven and this wall in this kitchen with this much cooking is a genuine challenge and the teams that get it clean deserve the comment.

Bathroom: shower head — he turned it on. Even spray. He looked pleased. Taps: touched. Smooth. Toilet crouched. Clean. The sealant crack: he photographed it. He said 'I'll send someone.' He'd seen it before.

Children's room: the cricket ball. He picked it up. He held it for a moment — the weight of it, the leather, the seam — and put it on the kitchen counter next to the colouring book and the ghee tin. He didn't say anything. A landlord who's managed houses in E7 for 12 years has seen a lot of things left behind. A cricket ball is not unusual. The ghee tin is not unusual. The dried mango on the wall is not unusual. What would be unusual is a house in Upton Park where nobody cooks and nobody plays cricket and nobody leaves mango on the wall.

Nine minutes. Everything passed on the cleaning. The sealant crack documented. The wall behind the hob earned a comment.

Deposit returned in full within 8 days. The family moved to a 4-bed terrace on Boleyn Road — more space, one more bedroom, the three children growing and the house growing with them. The cricket ball went too. The colouring book went too. The ghee tin probably didn't — it had been there long enough to become part of the kitchen rather than part of the family. And the wall behind the hob in the house on Plashet Grove was clean for the first time in a long time, and it would stay clean until the next family moved in and started cooking, which in Upton Park would be about two weeks.