The first hour in a new shared apartment should not begin with assembling a bed. Walk through the empty place with your phone first and record what you have actually been handed. Months later, nobody remembers whether the scratch in the parquet was there in August, who inherited the sticky fridge shelf, or when the black mark beneath the shower seal first appeared. Good student apartment cleaning is partly about hygiene. It is also about giving every flatmate the same evidence before boxes and competing memories get in the way. For a fuller room-by-room method, see our guide to cleaning an apartment before move-in.
Before the boxes arrive, document the apartment
Take your pictures before touching anything. Once you wipe the hob or clean the mark beside a window, the original condition is gone. Start with a slow video walkthrough, then take detailed stills. Keep the files in a shared folder that all tenants can access, ideally with the original timestamps intact.
Closed appliance doors tell you very little. Photograph the inside of the oven, its trays, the fridge seals, freezer, extractor filter and appliance labels. In the bathroom, capture grout, silicone, drains, the bottom edge of the shower and the cabinet beneath the basin. Shoot floor damage in daylight, with both a close-up and a wider image that identifies the room. Use the same approach for a cracked socket, loose handle or stained mattress.
Try to separate dirt, ordinary wear and actual damage. Grease in the oven is dirt. A lightly worn path across older parquet is usually wear. A cracked tile or a burnt worktop is damage. You do not need to make the final legal judgment during check-in; you do need an accurate description acknowledged by the landlord. “Bathroom in poor condition” will not help much. “Black staining along approximately 20 cm of silicone in the right shower corner, photos 18-21” will.
The handover record should also list keys, meter readings, furniture in each room and whether appliances work. Switch on the oven briefly, check for heavy ice in the freezer, run both taps and flush the toilet. Report faults to the landlord in writing the same day. Photos alone will not settle every argument over an apartment deposit, but photos paired with an inventory and dated email create a much clearer trail. Treat these records as the evidence layer of your rental move-in checklist, not as a substitute for the signed handover form.
What to clean first in an empty bedroom
An empty room offers one chance to reach places that will stay hidden for the rest of the term. Work from the top: light fittings, wardrobe tops, curtain rails, window frames and sills. Continue inside cupboards and drawers, then wipe the door, switches and handles. Leave skirting boards, the radiator and spaces behind furniture until shortly before vacuuming. Do the floor last. Otherwise dust from a high shelf lands on fresh mop marks and you repeat the job.
I once saw a student room in Žižkov that looked perfectly clean from the doorway. A lightweight desk moved ten centimetres and the story changed: a sticky drink mark, months of crumbs and two undated insect traps sat behind it. That sort of find can later trigger an ugly debate about who introduced pests. Lift the mattress, inspect its seams and bed frame, remove drawers when the construction allows it, and use a torch beneath the wardrobe. Photograph a problem before treating it.
For ordinary dust and washable surfaces, water, a product suited to the material and a clean microfibre cloth are enough. Save disinfectant for high-touch points and surfaces that may carry biological contamination: handles, switches, grips and perhaps a mattress stain if the manufacturer permits treatment. Never combine chlorine products with acids or vinegar. A stronger chemical smell is not proof of a cleaner room; in a small space with poor airflow it is mostly a headache.
Use a well-wrung mop on wood and do not leave water sitting in laminate joints. Test wall marks in an inconspicuous spot because cheap paint can lift onto the cloth. A mattress with a persistent smell, broad stains or signs of bedbugs needs more than a spray. Document it and discuss replacement or specialist treatment with the landlord before anybody sleeps there.
Kitchen and bathroom: where the first shared-space disputes begin
Many arguments do not start with a dirty mop. They start with “I thought that shelf was free.” Divide the fridge, freezer, food cupboards and crockery storage while the apartment is empty. Identical shelf space is not always necessary. Someone who cooks every evening may need more room than a flatmate who eats at the university canteen. The agreement does need to be visible. Coloured labels or a photo posted to the flat chat beat four different memories.
The initial shared apartment cleaning should cover the fridge interior, seals and drain hole; oven and racks; extractor filter; the cabinet under the sink; and the accessible area around the trap. In the bathroom, clean around the toilet fixings, shower head, drain, grout, silicone and extractor fan. Old grease on top of kitchen cabinets can smell even when the worktop shines. Keep a separate cloth colour for the toilet rather than carrying one cloth around the room.
The scale and cause matter when you find mould. A few surface spots on silicone may be cleaned with an appropriate mould product after you photograph them and ventilate the room. A damp wall, recurring black patches, crumbling plaster or a musty smell from the structure is no longer an ordinary cleaning task. The same goes for a leaking trap, failed fan, sewer smell, cockroach traces or signs of bedbugs. Notify the landlord. Do not paint over the evidence or agree to pay for repairs before responsibilities are clear.
Take a second set of photographs after cleaning. The first set shows what you received; the next shows your work. If mould returns in the same corner six months later, you have evidence that the bathroom was not simply neglected from day one.
How to divide regular cleaning between flatmates
“Everyone cleans as they go” sounds friendly and usually fails. Nobody knows whether “clean the kitchen” means wiping the counter or also emptying recycling, washing the sink and sweeping crumbs. Write down small tasks with visible outcomes: clean the toilet and basin; scrub the shower and drain; wipe the counter, hob and sink; vacuum and mop shared floors; take out general waste and recycling.
Choose frequency according to use, not an idealised home routine. A bin in a four-person Prague flat may need attention every other day. Each cook should wipe the worktop and hob immediately. Bathrooms and shared floors often need a weekly clean, while the fridge or drain can run on a longer cycle. A plate left in a bedroom for three days is not somebody else's Sunday task.
A weekly rotation is usually fairer than permanent jobs. For four people, create four bundles of roughly comparable effort and move every name forward one place each week. Anyone travelling swaps their bundle with a named flatmate in advance; the chore does not evaporate because its owner misses Sunday evening. Put the rota on the fridge or in a shared sheet. I would keep the technology boring. A system that takes ten taps to update will die during exam season.
Agree on two money rules too. Split communal supplies and bin bags equally, while identifiable damage belongs to the person who caused it. If nobody knows where damage came from, open the move-in photographs before opening an argument.
When a one-off professional clean is worth it
Cleaning before moving in is manageable when the empty apartment has ordinary dust and you have half a day without movers in the doorway. Professional student apartment cleaning becomes useful after previous tenants when the oven is heavily coated, grease covers several areas, the bathroom has stubborn limescale, or your key handover leaves only a few hours before flatmates arrive. A cleaner cannot repair a fault or replace specialist pest control, so keep those problems separate.
Define the scope item by item. State the number of rooms, condition of the oven and fridge, whether windows and cupboard interiors are included, and whether water and electricity work. Send photographs. “Deep-clean the whole apartment” can mean a different list to each person. Confirm who supplies products, where the team can park and whether furniture can be moved.
Divide the cost before making a booking. Shared areas can be split equally; private bedrooms can be charged only to the people who want them cleaned. If the landlord handed over the property in a condition that conflicts with your agreement, send the evidence and ask for a remedy first. Recovering a cost that nobody approved is far harder afterwards.
Inspect the finished work with doors open. Look inside the oven and fridge, run a finger along a cabinet top, check floor corners, the shower drain and the space behind the toilet. Make sure product residue has not been left behind and delicate materials are undamaged. Take the “after” photographs, then bring in boxes and confirm each flatmate's storage zones.
If you are preparing a shared flat in Prague and would rather not spend an August afternoon scraping an old oven, contact ČistýKout for a no-obligation cleaning request. Include photographs and a clear scope so the offer reflects the apartment you are actually moving into.
