I have never heard of such a thing.

A little obsessive, perhaps, but not abnormally so. Just get one of those nifty bleach pens they sell nowadays and you're home free.

There was a guy in college - name of Ralf - who was fond of writing graffiti on the grout. His motto:

"Write it on the grout and they can't get it out"

Get a cleaning company in and then show the receipt...my place in Iowa gave a whole list of things-- which I made a point of doing-- but was still deducted (but then the manager my second year was a blatant anti-Semite--from Utica, NY).

It is odd. I've never heard of that, even in SF. Reminds me of this one landlord I had (super nice guy, other than this) who attempted to refuse my deposit because I hadn't replaced the kitchen light with a brighter one. Never mind it was the same light that was there when I moved in. "It couldn't have been," he insisted. "How could you have even seen to cook?" I wanted to say, "well, if you think it's too dim to cook with, then why did you expect me to cook with it when I moved in?" But I was speechless -- it was just so strange and absurd and unexpected.

I'd consider double checking with the landlady to see if there's anything else she expects -- just to cover your derrière.

I think this is very unusual in that I would classify the condition as normal wear and tear and thus the landlady's problem, not yours.

Then again, just how much tile is at issue?

Very odd. I've never had to do this. I've only had one landlord complain that I didn't clean the oven very well; but it was much cleaner than when I moved in.

The management in the hacked up brownstone in Boston did this too, but didn't give me a list in advance.
The asshole who owned the condo in Denver tried to pull this as well, but he'd been coming in without giving me advance notice.

IAAL(I am a landlord) The general requirement is to leave it pretty clean. It's the Landlord's job to do the big cleanup for the next tenant. But on a common sense basis, cleaning the grout w/ bleach pen isn't difficult, and may save hassle.

Take pictures. Take pictures when you move in, and when you move out. It saves a lot of trouble later.

No advice on the landlord front. I have an anecdotal grout tale, though.

My kitchen counters are tile too. (Pain in the ass, actually. I have three separate areas of counter space: One on either side of the sink and one next to the stove. The one next to the stove and one of the spaces next to the sink are where I do all kitchen prep stuff, set dirty dishes, etc. The space on the other side of the sink is where my dish rack is. There is always a towel under the dish rack.

It's pretty incredible how much whiter the grout is underneath the dish rack than where I do actual cooking. So it's true that normal wear and tear really does have an affect.

If yours is all uniformly discolored, though, I don't see what the big deal is.

Before you go to the effort of doing all the grout with one of those bleach pens, though, test a single spot. The bleach pen didn't work on my grout. I would have been pissed if I spent a lot of time on it.

What mischief said.

My own landlord made this one of the conditions of getting my entire deposit back. I left the apartment in better condition than when I moved in.

By the way: turn on fan, put Clorox bleach on tiles, sponge around, wait 30 sec, push water-bleach mixture into sink with sponge. There, that took all of 2 minutes. Don't splash your clothes or your eye.

As ikkyu2 shows this particular task is not the most difficult, however where I take issue is in where does this stop? To clean an entire apartment to that level of detail requires that everything first be moved out.

From a tenant I would expect the carpets vacuumed and the floors mopped, but before a new tenant moves in, the landlord should be shampooing those carpets and waxing the floors.

Same for counter-tops, tenant: wipe-down; landlord: sanitize.