There has been something of an unintentional break here due to sickness (mine and my son’s) and then moving into our new house on Amager. I like to get the boxes unpacked as soon as I can and this time we are lucky enough to have a carport to store the empties in rather than simply moving them from one space to another. We are seeing the end of boxes now and I had a lovely surprise of opening one to find that it was only half full of things and the rest was packing paper.

When we moved in we discovered a lot of stuff left behind by the previous owners, some of which is useful and other stuff not so much. It made me think about the etiquette of moving out of somewhere. I may be a bit too nice to people who move in after me but here goes.

One – do a general clean and tidy For example wipe out all your cupboards. You don’t need to go mad but a quick swipe with a damp cloth is enough. Give the bathroom a clean. Mow the grass. If you have a pet make sure there are now hairy mats for people to discover.

Two – clean your white goods  A lot like above it doesn’t need to be a deep clean but people appreciate a clean washing machine drawer, if nothing else. It is amazing how many people think that something that cleans other things cleans itself – they do not and there is often a lot of scum left around dishwasher doors and in the washing machine. In our last place the washing machine had such a build up of dirty soap and goodness knows what else throughout the whole machine that it, and all clothes washed in it, stank of ponds (needless to say we needed to replace it).

Three – leaving stuff behind Now in fairness some of the things the previous owners of our place left were great and we were delighted. Some we could make use of but wouldn’t necessarily chose and other stuff should simply have been taken to the dump, which is less than ten minutes away. It is polite to give the buyers of your place the choice to take things but lazy and cheeky to simply leave it. The toilet brush full of brown water was not something I was not pleased to discover.

Four – empty your wheelie bins I think this speaks for itself as no one want to move in to find all their bins full and no clue as it when bin day is.

Five – refuse info  Now this is one where people have to be really nice but when we moved in to discover the aforementioned full bins it would have been super to know the bins days. A quick note on a piece of paper on the fridge would have enough. Interestingly you can find your bins days on the kommune website (I have a post about waste and refuse coming up soon – should be useful to many people) but I missed one before I had time to find it and then had nowhere to put our rubbish.

Six – stuff you should leave Paint pots so people can touch up any marks with the same colour. All manuals for appliances. Takeaway menus for local places.

Seven – a bottle of wine I’ve never done this one but wouldn’t it be nice to have a bottle of fizz waiting there for you to toast your new home with?

Thankfully I didn’t have the experience my parents had when we moved into a new place when I was about three. There were brown smears on the walls, which my mum was convinced were poo, fleas in the carpets (which promptly were ripped up and thrown out of the windows) and the power disconnected and all the wires for the cooker ripped out. All on one of the coldest days of the winter.

What do you think? Any horror stories or things to do to add to the list?