Curtains And Moving Out Cleaning
Some things that need to be done as part of moving out cleaning are obvious. It goes without saying that you will have to scrub the loo, get the dust on the windowsill and take a rubber to the pencil “artwork” you discovered on your five-year-old’s bedroom wall behind the door. However, there are other areas where you might not be sure about whether or not you need to clean them or not. Take the curtains – these are often a bit of a tricky area.
What Do You Do With The Curtains?
Well, if you’re talking about a house you own, it’s up to you what you do with the curtains when you move out. You can opt to clean them and hang them back up, you can just leave them as is and let the new owner decide what to do with them (they could very easily decide that they want to change the curtains), or you can take them down and take them with you. In the case of the latter, then it’s a nice idea to put fresh ones up, although not all home sellers do this.
However, what about when you move out of a rental property? Unless you bought and hung your own curtains up in place of the landlord’s curtains when you moved in, those curtains are part of the house, and they need to be as clean as when you moved in. This means that you may need to ensure that they are properly cleaned to keep the landlord happy and get your deposit money back.
The simplest thing to do with the curtains is just ask the landlord what he or she would like done! In some cases, the landlord may have been planning to update the curtains, especially if they’re getting a bit old, worn and faded, or if he/she has just updated the curtains in their own house and had planned to move the old ones to the rental. In other cases, the landlord might say not to bother unless they’re really bad, and in other cases, he or she might ask you to clean them. If you know the curtains are in really bad condition (your toddler scribbled on them with a permanent marker, the cat clawed them or they blew into a candle flame and got singed), then you can tell the landlord that the curtains are bad and offer to replace them yourself (ask about preferred colour). Or just go ahead and replace them anyway, picking something with a colour as close to the original as you can. This can often prove cheaper than losing your deposit money because of curtains in bad condition.
Incidentally, if the curtains are merely getting old and the discolouration on them is caused by hanging in strong sunlight for a long time, then this comes under the heading of ordinary wear and tear. If you are moving out of a rental property after being in there for years, the curtains aren’t going to look quite as spiffy as they did when you first moved in. Time and UV rays will do that to fabric, especially reds, pinks and purples, which seem to fade very easily. The landlord cannot penalise you or hold back your deposit money if the curtains are faded by sunshine, as there is nothing that you did to cause the curtains to look that way, and it’s not a cleaning issue.
However, if the curtains are dirty rather than damaged, then you might like to try cleaning them yourself. You could take them down to a dry-cleaning agent, but it is sometimes possible to clean the curtains yourself… although this does have a few risks, and you have to know what you’re doing. Getting a professional moving out company to help or even a professional upholstery cleaner might be the safest option.
How To Clean A Curtain
If the only problem with the curtains is a bit of dust and a few cobwebs (those spiders go everywhere, don’t they?), then you can actually do quite a lot of cleaning with the vacuum cleaner, assuming that you’ve got a model that has a hose and canister, and a set of heads that can be changed. Use the upholstery head on the hose and sweep down both sides of the curtain to get the dust off. This is a two-person job, as you will need one person to hold the curtain steady so it doesn’t go up the vacuum, and one person to operate the vacuum cleaner.
If you are lucky, this will leave the curtains looking pretty good, and it may be all you need to do to keep the landlord happy. All the same, if the curtains still look a bit grubby and have things on them that won’t come off with the vacuum cleaner, then you may need to up the ante a bit and actually wash the curtains. I remember one set of dining room curtains in my place that had a smudge of tomato sauce on them…
To wash the curtains, you will need to take them down from the railings. Your next step will be to check them for colourfastness by getting a teeny bit of the hem damp and seeing if the colour bleeds (test this by putting a pale-coloured rag underneath). If you’re really lucky, the curtains will have a care label on them telling you how to wash them – mine do, anyway! Follow these instructions.
However, if your curtains don’t have a care label, this is more or less how it’s done:
- Remove all hooks and similar metal bits and trims. If your curtains are pencil pleat curtains, loosen them off so the pleats open out.
- Pop them in the bathtub (if you have one) or the largest sink in the house. You will need to wash curtains by hand, not in the machine. Start by running warm water into the sink or bath and adding some mild detergent. Wool wash products, melted soap gel, or shampoo will work (but don’t use a 2-in-1 shampoo–conditioner blend) will do the job. You may still want to put on rubber gloves. Don’t use bleach.
- ·Swish the curtains around in their warm soapy bath until the water goes a funny grey-brown colour (it will). Avoid vigorous scrubbing or wringing, although if you notice some stubborn spots (like that tomato sauce), then you can gently rub or scrub this off with a soft brush such as the trusty old toothbrush.
- Drain the sink or bath, then run in some fresh water to rinse them and swirl this around. This will move the traces of soapy water and dirt. Then give it a second rinse.
- Remove the curtain from the bathtub. During drying, with thermal curtains, it’s very important to ensure that the curtain doesn’t fold onto itself so backing presses against the backing. Folding and sticking will damage the backing.
- Dry curtains hanging up. Don’t use pegs, as they will mark the fabric. Instead, use the curtains’ own hooks and rings (yes, you’ll have to put them back on through all that wet, soggy material). Don’t squeeze or wring the curtains before hanging.
- Once the curtains are dry, check them for wrinkles. If you’re lucky, the drying process will have worked out all the creases and wrinkles, thanks to gravity and the weight of the curtain. If you’re not, then you may have to iron the curtains. If you do, use the iron on low and only run the iron on the “right” side rather than the side with the backing.
- Hang the curtains back up again, tightening up the pleats if that’s the sort they are. Don’t forget to clean the curtain track and the pelmet before you hang them up!
Well, here it is, my handy, quick, rather short, but very useful guide on what to do with your curtains before you move out of your rented accommodation.
Time for a little disclaimer. The above steps and procedures work for me, and have done so many times in the past. However, they may not work for you, as curtains are made of so many different fabrics and materials. Use the above wisely and deploy massive amounts of common sense.
You’ve been warned :-).