Security deposit disputes almost never come down to the middle of the living room floor. They come down to the oven, the fridge, the bathroom grout, and the inside of the kitchen cabinets, because those are the places a landlord opens during a walkthrough and a tenant forgets during a move.
Clean in the right order or you will do the work twice. Empty the apartment completely first, then work top to bottom in each room: light fixtures and ceiling fans, then walls and switch plates, then cabinets and appliances, then floors last. Anything else means dust falls onto surfaces you already finished.
The kitchen carries the most weight. Inside the oven including the racks and the door glass, inside and underneath the fridge, inside every cabinet and drawer, the range hood filter, and the backsplash grout. Pull the stove out if it rolls. That gap is the single most-checked spot in a New York walkthrough.
The bathroom is second. Grout lines, the shower track, behind the toilet base, the exhaust vent cover, and the underside of the toilet seat hinges. Hard water staining on glass and chrome needs an acidic cleaner and time, not more scrubbing.
Then the details that read as care: window sills and tracks, closet shelves and rods, baseboards, door frames, and the marks where furniture touched the walls. Patch small nail holes if your lease requires it.
If you would rather hand the whole list to someone else, a professional move-out clean is quoted flat and usually costs less than the portion of a deposit that gets withheld. We do these across Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, often on the same day a lease ends.