Removal company come on Wednesday this week! Just mowed the lawn for the last time and thats the final bit of gardening kit now cleaned ... we are not bring much, but there are a few newer pricer bits of kit we are taking ... chainsaw, lawnmower, strimmer, hedge cutter etc ... as well as a couple of forks, spades etc etc ... they have all been drained, cleaned, scrubbed, soaked in bleach, cleaned again, then lightly oiled for transit ... has anyone ever had stuff stopped on its way in for not being clean enough? There are no obvious dirt on any of it, but I suppose if an over enthusiastic customs official really looked I am sure he would see some dirt!

So, how clean is clean - cursory glance clean, or screw driver and magnifying glass clean?!

That should suffice. I don't think many of the containers are opened by customs, I know ours wasn't.

To be honest, we never cleaned to the extent you have. We brought a few bits of garden equipment with us plus bikes and some kids outdoor toys (slide etc) and we just hosed them down and gave them a bit of a wipe over too and had no problems whatsoever.

Good luck with your move!

I agree with the above, DH pressure washed his bike and tools that he brought over, and that were good enough!
Good luck with the move!

Whether that's an accurate assessment or not, it's not worth taking the risk and potential expense of an inspection though, is it?

I think what the OP has done should be fine.

We did a good clean like you, customs are not clean freaks but the soil on things can carry parasites/seeds/weeds that we don't have here and do not want!
They never questioned us or even checked our container.

Thanks for the reassurance folks - now fingers crossed its not more than the 20ft container in total!

We power hosed all garden stuff/bikes and then cleaned with Jayes fluid.

We were questioned by customs (but container not opened). They liked that we had used the Jayes fluid. We were also told if they do open the container and you have used it, they can smell you have done some cleaning.

We jet-washed all of our garden stuff and bikes; and made sure that they were the last things packed onto the container - so that the customs people would not have to unload everything to check them if needs be. Our container was not checked; but it did give us peace of mind...

We scrubbed and Jeyes fluid-ed bikes, outdoor shoes etc etc. Pickfords advised us not to bring chainsaw, strimmer, hedge cutter, trampoline etc.
None of our boxes were opened, and we now regret leaving the tools and trampoline behind.

we left garden tools behind but just because they were old and cheap, but brought bike, cleaned and wrapped. Moving company said it depends a lot on how it is written on the inventory. Not sure if that is true but customs never checked ours.

We had to list on a seperate inventory all our "outdoor" stuff and what we had done to clean and sterilise it. We did what everyone else did and washed then Jayes fluided everything. We also painted the blades of spades, trowels etc with Hammerite paint. Perhaps a bit over the top but it meant we brought EVERYTHING with no problems at all. The only thing we didn't bring was our rather ageing and grubby flymo. It was just not worth the risk; plus it was far too small for our yard now. I'm still a great believer in packing it if you can and then assessing whether you can use it here or not later. A few judiciously placed transformers and we can use pretty much everything electrical we brought from the UK.

The transformer is packed! Had to get one to use lots of garage type stuff ... would have been too much to leave it all behind!

When we made up our inventory we added at the bottom something to the effect of - All outdoor items/tools have been thoroughly washed as per requirements - our container was never checked