Cleaner - how does it work?

[fruityorange]

I get fed up with how much cleaning I seem to do. If I mention this to anyone they always say I should hire a cleaner. But if I clean the house thoroughly, it does not stay okayish for a week. I need to clean every day or at a minimum most days.
So if you have a weekly cleaner, do you just accept the house getting dirtier throughout the days until the cleaner comes? Or do you still end up doing some cleaning every day?

I wonder this too. I have to sweep our hard floors daily if I don't want them crunchy underfoot. The bathroom needs daily cleaning in addition.

I can't imagine having a once a week go over...

I wipe kitchen surfaces, hoover downstairs and wipe toothpaste off sinks daily. Clear up spills. Everything else waits a week.

Having a cleaner is certainly life changing but there are a few things to be mindful of. - Yes you accept the house getting dirtier as the days go on because a) you know your cleaner is coming and so it seems pointless to do it and b) they need something to clean!

• It will never be exactly how you do it and you need to make peace with that. Excellent cleaners can come very close, but the cleaning of your home is quite a personal thing
• you will need to tidy up in advance, they are not housekeepers. Most will tolerate clutter and clean around it, but it will be a better clean if you're tidy

We have ours come every other week, so in between we clean ourselves as usual. This feels like a good compromise and means I can do the bits I am fussy about that she may have missed.

It's life changing and you won't look back (with the right one!)

What Parkmama said, to some extent.

Also, though, never in my 35+ years of being an adult have I "cleaned every day", so maybe you are on some higher level of 'standards' than many of us ?
I mean, obviously I'd clean up something that were spilled, and I wipe down the kitchen surfaces and table, and if I noticed splashes on the hob or whatever, but I've never been in the habit of putting the vacuum round or dusting on a daily basis anyway.

Okay, it does not sound like it is for me then thanks. I do not dust every day. But no way can the bathroom or shower only be cleaned once a week. The kitchen floor really needs to be swept at least every day, but sometimes only get swept every second day. It would be filthy after a week.
I can see a cleaner might work for jobs you do less such as cleaning windows and doors and ovens. But I suspect a normal cleaner would not be happy to come once a fortnight to do these type of jobs.
And I wipe kitchen surfaces multiple times during the day.
When I was a student we had a weekly cleaner in halls. But I was 18 and my standards were pretty low. I also made less mess than children do.

Mine does the deeper clean stuff, so I still Hoover every day and do the other basics but the cleaner does all of that and also skirting boards, under sofas, light fittings, kitchen cupboard doors etc

Our cleaner comes once a week but I Hoover downstairs daily (all hard floors and I despise gritty bits on the floor), it takes me about 2 minutes although I usually do it several times a day. It’s a cordless one though which hangs up in the utility room and it would take longer to sweep, use a dustpan and brush and then bin the contents. I also clean toilets again and the showers/bath gets sprayed and cleaned after every use anyway, similar to the sinks which get sprayed and wiped over when I brush my teeth at bedtime.
Small amounts of regular cleaning help keep the house in good order but there are 5 of us living here and usually there are additional people in and out every day. I hate having a messy house.
Not everything is perfect but it’s always tidy and clean enough that if anyone knocked I wouldn’t be embarrassed to let them in.

My cleaner comes for 3 hours on a Friday. She changes the beds, cleans the fridge, the exterior of the kitchen presses, windows, skirting boards and deep cleans the bathroom, my bathroom has a lot of chrome so she shines that. I clean everyday myself too. I find what she does for me so helpful.

Well for a start I'd have a cleaner come in twice weekly.
How can you be producing so much crumbs and crap for a filthy floor?!
Re. Toilets if just put bleach in every night bit get the cleaner to properly clean them twice a week.

It doesn’t answer your question at all and I know I’m quite a slattern with housework but cleaning your bathroom EVERY day? I would feel a massive sense of achievement if mine got cleaned once a month. It never does. It doesn’t look particularly dirty, what are you doing in it that makes it require so much cleaning. How do you find the time for this excessive cleaning? Not judging at all, just genuinely amazed this happens!

We sweep the kitchen floor and wipe the kitchen surfaces daily. Every couple of days, I bleach the loos. Other than that, the cleaner does it weekly.

I think your standards are quite high. Or maybe you're just home a lot more? When we both worked full time in the office and were often out at weekends, I didn't even bother doing the mid week toilet clean as it just wasn't that dirty.

I Hoover living areas daily. But our cleaner hoovers under furniture and in the bedrooms and takes the rugs up for a good shake and hoovers under the couch cushions etc.

I wipe the bathroom basin and swill round the loos as needed. But she wipes over the windowsills and behind the toilet seat and mops the floor and scrapes the limescale.

I wipe over the work surfaces in the kitchen and sweep, but she lifts the canisters and wipes behind them, polishes the drain board, wipes down the lock boards and mops the floor.

I make beds daily, but she changes the sheets. And bathroom towels.

She dusts the ceiling cobwebs and the bookshelves, gets crumbs out from under the fridge, cleans the inside of the windows and picks up dead leaves from houseplants.

I still have to do the day to day little bits but because she’s doing the bigger things regularly, the smaller things are quicker.

And a few times a year she comes for longer sessions and we do a big deep clean together - one room at a time and take everything off shelves and only put back what’s needed, that sort of thing.

I often think on all the cleaning threads, that people must be using a different definition of 'cleaning'.

If I am in the bathroom, and there was some mark or dirt in the sink - say, when the dc were little and hadn't cleaned some toothpaste that they had spat out - then I'd wipe it there and then, when I was washing my hands. Or if I noticed a mark in the toilet that someone had left, again, I'd clean it there and then when I was in there. I don't call that "cleaning the bathroom", however because that is done everytime someone is in there, then I can't understand why it would need "cleaning" any more than once a week or less.
Same with kitchens - If I noticed some crumbs or fluff or some grit or something on the floor, I'd pick up the dustpan and brush and just deal with it there and then. I wipe surfaces as I go along, if there is any spillage when cooking or making a drink. I don't count that as 'cleaning the kitchen'.
Everyone in the house does. If they are old enough to make a drink or make a sandwich then they are old enough to wipe the surface if it needs it afterwards. I don't understand how people are creating so much mess as to need to do all this excessive cleaning.

Get a robot vacuum for the daily sweeping. It's a game changer.
We have a eufy s max.

Cleaning bathrooms and bleaching toilets every day seems a little...excessive.

@BackforGood I clean the shower totally about 2-3 times a week. It really needs it 3 times a week. I clean the basins and taps at least twice a week. It is not just wiping a bit of toothpaste off. They start to look really dull and horrible after a couple of days. I clean the toilet including toilet seat and around it at least every few days.
I find if I only sweep the kitchen floor once a week it is literally filthy. And we are shoes off. And no it is not just dealing with a spill, it is just the muck and crumbs that accumulate.
My DP does a big hoover with all the cobwebs, under furniture done as part of it. I could not be bothered with that.
God maybe I have developed high standards! I never used to have.

@DarcyLewis I would never bleach toilets everyday, that is so bad for the environment. And toilets do not need it. It is toilet seats and the surrounds that need cleaning regularly. Plus the toilet brush scrub if someone has left a skid mark.

I don’t bleach toilets full stop! I don’t own bleach, never have done, the smell makes me heave.
My kitchen is heavily used, 3 people make and eat breakfast and make lunches to take to work/school and then someone makes dinner for 5. Of course the kitchen floor accumulates crumbs along the way. I’m struggling to see how that couldn’t happen

@TheChosenTwo I use toilet cleaner. I have no idea if it has bleach in it. But the toilet does smell bad if you never use anything.

@LeSquigh

It doesn’t answer your question at all and I know I’m quite a slattern with housework but cleaning your bathroom EVERY day? I would feel a massive sense of achievement if mine got cleaned once a month. It never does. It doesn’t look particularly dirty, what are you doing in it that makes it require so much cleaning. How do you find the time for this excessive cleaning? Not judging at all, just genuinely amazed this happens!

Every month? If I leave my bathroom without cleaning for 10 days it starts to smell. I can't imagine how yours smells after a month?

I suspect lesquih lives alone?

We have a roomba downstairs and another upstairs which hoover the floors most days to get rid of fluff, crumbs etc. We do minimal cleaning (just wiping kitchen sides after cooking, cleaning toilets, wiping surfaces ad hoc, etc) and our cleaner comes weekly and does everything else.

It's nice not to have to worry, but we don't have time to clean & would never get round to it if not for a cleaner, so if you're keeping your house super clean anyway it doesn't sound like it would help much!

@fruityorange yes of course I use toilet cleaner! Just not bleach.

@TheChosenTwo sorry, I just say bleach as a generic thing. I do not know what is in the toilet cleaner. I suspect a lot of people do the same thing.

I do the toilet and the kitchen daily, and Hoover downstairs daily. Cleaner then concentrates on the bedrooms (two floors), hoovering, dusting, skirting boards, cobwebs, windows and a deep bathroom clean. Plus I like the Thursday night "the cleaner is coming tomorrow" tidy that means clutter never hangs around for more than a week. And then the feeling of having nothing to do when I wake up at the weekend is worth it's weight in gold.