Clean a house to a good standard in just two hours

You do know bleach is really bad for the environment?
No-one I know cleans that often. I do it when things are looking grubby, but when I do clean I do a really thorough job so a kitchen or bathroom might take me getting on for an hour.

I've always wondered about the 2 hour clean as well... I can spend that giving my kitchen a good going over and my house is generally clean and tidy. However, it gets very dusty, daily (old, floorboards, by a road etc), and wet wiping dust alone takes up so much time.

My cleaner said she likes to book four hours for a new customer to get everything up to a standard. Then it's two hours a week. Last week she did a deep clean of the kitchen, mopped hall, bathroom and vacuumed sitting room. She's very quick.

No I don't think so. I don't know anyone who does that daily. I do bathrooms and vacuuming once a week.

Absolutely , every day the bathrooms are cleaned toilets bleached, worktops oven tops sprayed and wiped down and hoover (don’t pull furniture out daily) most of my friends also do this I thought it was normal ??

It depends what you want done, and what you do yourself.

Christ alive. I only do some of the stuff on your list once or twice a year, and my house is spotless. Wiping tiles, windows, skirting boards, doors...... You must be really dirty, or obsessively clean. Oh, and I never used bleach.

I could when I was working as a cleaner. I can't do my own house in a month of Sundays but I could shit absolute miracles in someone else's admittedly tidy house. It used to sparkle, my favourite ever job.

No chance. Scrub sink, toothbrush to scrub crevices etc, rinse sink, dry sink. Same with taps. Polish taps to streak-free finish. Loo cleaner in and left to sit for a while. Scrub bowl. Clean rest of loo. Use steamer to really get into all the nooks n crannies. Wipe tops of doors, cabinets, mirrors. Scrub shower, rinse shower, dry shower, polish glass screen to streak-free finish. Same routine with bath. Hoover floor. Clean floor. Empty bin. Clean loo roll holder, towel rail, shower head, any shelves, cabinets etc.

Our cleaner does 1.5 hours. That includes kitchen diner surfaces, hob and sink, vacuum and mopping, vacuuming and mopping hallways and living room and 1.5 bathrooms. If any time left over will do dusting but it's definitely not a deep clean eg not skirting boards or lifting things off shelves etc

You really can

I used to have a cleaner for 2 hours in my old house. It was 4 beds, but the size of an average 3 bed and with only one bathroom. She would clean the kitchen and bathroom, and hoover and mop throughout. In reality, she got through these tasks in about 1 hr 20 (and then left!) so I think a decent regular clean on a small-medium house could definitely be done in 2 hours. That wouldn't include any deep cleaning, occasional tasks, or things like changing beds.

You can't.

I couldn’t clean one floor in two hours! But that’s because my house is not tidy, so half the time it’s picking things up and putting stuff away before I can start any proper cleaning! I used to have a cleaner who could spend half an hour just doing the bathroom and she never managed to get our whole (5 bed at the time) house done, even though because she came every other week it was a lot tidier than now my current home.
I once had a woman who trained at a hotel and she could though - did an excellent job, got everything done and even had time to clean out a kitchen cupboard or two. She was unreliable though - would go MIA for a few weeks at a time and eventually just disappeared (and I owed her £20)! She was the best.

That is absolutely ridiculous. How can that possibly take a cleaner 2 hours? I can clean my own 3 bed top to bottom including bathroom in 2 hours

It’s the tidying that takes me time. I do need to declutter. But I still can’t clean my house in 2 hours.
I don’t use bleach!!

If my sums are right, your figures take it up to a total of

5 mins per toilet (3) = 15 mins
10 for each bath or shower (3) = 30 mins
5 for each sink (4) = 20 mins
5 per window/mirror (3 windows and 4 mirrors) = 35 mins

ie 95 mins which is 1 hour and 35 mins.

It doesn't actually take me the number of minutes you've estimated for the above, as I.5 hours also lets me wipe down the tiled areas, cupboard doors, sink counter (one room has two sinks with a countertop) and doors/door handles plus empty two bins and put in new liners.

To the pp asking why tiled surfaces need cleaned each week, they regularly get splashed/marked plus one of our bathrooms has a tiled wall with decorative tile ridge which catches dust.

I still don't see how someone could clean a whole house in 2 hours, or even do a couple of bathrooms and a kitchen in that time.

I used to have a couple of cleaners who did three hours total in our old house. They didn't clean the bathrooms or kitchen apart from hoovering and washing the floors. In addition to those, they hoovered and dusted the living areas (two rooms), hall/stairs, washed the hard floors of the living areas and downstairs hall floor, and dusted/hoovered three bedrooms. I made sure all the rooms were tidy before they arrived so they had a clear run. They worked hard without a break and that was what they could manage in three hours.

Our 4 bed house takes our cleaner 2.5 hours per week.

But our house is very tidy - everything is put away so surfaces are basically clear. And I clean the kitchen, toilets and sinks every day so there’s not a lot of scrubbing to do.

So our (very good) cleaner is able to focus on dusting, polishing, steam cleaning the floors and showers, cleaning inside windows and vacuuming.

She doesn’t do our beds, ironing or bins or loos (as she has ironically got a bit of a thing about toilets!) but she gets round everything else.

1. depends on the size of the house - mine is a mid-sized Victorian terrace
2. depends on how dirty it gets. We are an older couple with no pets and we (and our visitors) take shoes off at the front door. We don’t want around with food. We wipe down and tidy as we go along
3. it depends how clean you want it to be. I’m happy with: wipe down the kitchen, clean the bathrooms and downstairs loo. Hoover throughout. Mop hard floors. Wipe over furniture surfaces with a microfibre cloth and spray. I don’t need my cleaner to do skirting boards, on top of the kitchen units etc etc. They’re things that get done a few times a year on this house. My window cleaner does inside and out.

My cleaner comes once a fortnight for 2.5 hours. This is enough cleaning (and intrusion and expense) for me.

Depends on the house and what you mean by 'clean'! I can get my (3-bed, but 2 bedrooms used as offices) house what I'd consider basic day-to-day clean in 2 hours easily unless it was filthy for some reason. I can't do what I'd call a deep clean* in that time - that could take as long as you would let me take because there's always something else to add to the list.

*Everywhere hoovered and dusted, swept and mopped, everything tidy, mirrors and internal glass cleaned, door handles and banisters wiped, sinks disinfected, bedding changed, in the bathroom everything wiped down, shower screen scrubbed, tiles in shower cleaned, toilet scrubbed.

**All the finicky bits: inside the window casements and external doorframes, every skirting board wiped down, fridge entirely cleaned out and wiped down, inside all the cupboards wiped down inside, hoovering underneath the sofa/big furniture moved, all the books on high shelves dusted, every radiator wiped down, dust off the top of door frames, fabric cleaning machine on the high traffic bits of carpet, front door washed down, dishwasher and washing machine cleaning solutions run and filters emptied, sofa cushion covers washed, big oven clean, etc.

Maybe I'm a grubby bitch and some of you are cleaning inside your window casements weekly (I've certainly seen some cleaning Tiktoks where they are!) but when I say I'm cleaning the house normally I mean the former.

I don't have a cleaner any more but my cleaner used to do the former (minus beds being changed) every week and then pick one room to really deep clean as well. That took her 2 hours, but she was a pro and faster than me. House always felt sparkling....I miss her.

I clean weekly. Don't have time to do it daily. Doesn't need it, either, in my opinion. A thorough clean would be once in a blue moon for me!

We are renting a large 4 bedroom house. I can clean it in 2 hours as could my cleaner. That's just a basic clean, though.

How does it take 1.5 hours?

Say 5 mins per toilet. 10 for each bath or shower, 5 for each sink and 5 per window/mirror. There's plenty of time to sort out the floor in 1.5 hours then.

I'm a slattern because I wouldn't clean tiled walls weekly. You don't clean normal walls that often (if ever!).

If it’s clean to start with then fairly easily

We have a bathroom with bath and shower, a shower room (with WC) and a downstairs loo. It takes me 1.5 hours in total to clean them all each week. That includes cleaning mirrors, tiled walls and windows but doesn't include vacuuming or washing the floors. I cannot see how anyone can clean a whole house in 2 hours, or even clean three bathrooms/loos and the kitchen! And our house is pretty tidy.