Be honest: How much time do you spend on cleaning?

[HappyLittleAGR]

I’m really fascinated by the time people report. I spent 2-3 hours this morning on just one of the living rooms and the kitchen (course, there was a lot of dishes backed up. Gross, I know), and I could do that everyday and probably still not have a sparkling clean home, what with the dogs and the tornado of a child I’ve created. I’ve heard people say they only spend like 20 minutes a week on cleaning tasks and I just feel like they’re lying or trolling! Surely even if you lived in a studio flat, it would take longer than that to clean it ? And maybe people don’t count all of the little things people do habitually, like making the bed and changing the sheets, or cleaning up after dinner, or wiping the sink when you’re done in the bathroom in the morning… And maybe some people don’t have to mop so much if their house is mostly carpeted ?

What do you think?

To answer your questions:
I clean up after every meal.
I make the beds every day.
I change the sheets once a fortnight.
I wipe the sink perhaps twice a week, and do a full bathroom clean fortnightly.
I don’t mop at all, even though I have wooden floors, not carpet - I simply hoover.

However, I’m constantly on watch for the jobs unseen by my family - spiders webs on ceilings, clogged plug holes, dirty fingerprints on cupboards, drink splashes up the walls, etc.
I spend at least an hour per day getting things up to my standard, plus the usual laundry & food prep, etc.

Having just spend an awesome weekend at my friend’s house where clutter and inches of dust cloaked everything, I find myself questioning whether my standards are too high and I need to chill out a bit?

Dry dust it first with a bit of toilet roll, it gets the dust off so you’re not wiping it over, that speeds it up a lot or you end up wiping and it looking worse!
the other best tip someone gave me is leave products to work, so put the bleach down or spray the tiles then do something else and come back to it

Thanks, I’ll try that!

Clean freaks are strange to me. Life is so short.. there are better hobbies

Myself and 1 teen in a 4 bed house.

Clothes washing is done on Friday evenings in between getting home and making supper.
I spend Sunday morning 7 - 9.30 hoovering, cleaning the bathroom, dusting and mopping floors.
The kitchen is cleaned daily.

Five - six hours a week.

No for sure, I am absolutely doing that - I just mean if we’re counting minutes spent cleaning, then doing it as you go along counts and all adds up. Once something like a curry or bolognese is doing its thing on the hob I’m cleaning everything down and it’s left to simmer away. I’m still counting that time as time spent cleaning, though. I may well be a clean freak per pp’s comments, but I think people underestimate how much cleaning we’re all doing, even if it’s less than me.

I might have a problem, as I don’t like seeing any dirt anywhere. But I also find myself justified! I think I’m in the right, as I’m sure people who just leave it think they are. It’s not panicky and obsessive for me, more like I just crack on and get rid of dirt and mess. I’m not moving sofa cushions around or panicking about appearances, I just see it as dirt has been created and needs getting rid of. It’s as normal to me as jumping in the shower.

Hours!
i haven’t been working for the past few months and feel that i am finally getting the house to a base standard where i can do the minimum to keep on top of it.
However, I’d still say that requires an hour each morning and each evening to do things like a load of washing (at least one a day) from start to finish (ie folded and put in the relevant person’s bedroom), doing the dishwasher, doing a clean down of the kitchen (wiping table & work tops, hob, sink, doing any non-DW dishes, hoovering & possibly mopping) at least after breakfast & again after the last person has had dinner (rarely eat as a family due to clubs), doing a straighten up of the hallway, dining room, sitting room, playroom, bathrooms,
sorting out the cat litter trays.
We have a cleaner twice a week too!
And we still don’t have one of those calm, clutter free houses.

No more than an hour a day, including laundry. I don't cook every day (batch cook twice a week) and I clean things that are necessary for hygiene, but almoat never bother with windowsills and skirting boards. We seem to have a lot more leisure time than families we know - eg some of them will have a day at home each weekend to deal with chores whereas we are out from morning until dinner time on Saturdays and Sundays.

Not much. Live in a two-bed apartment with DP who does his share and a bit more. Maybe an hour a week. It’s boring.

Virtually none. We have a cleaner. Other than stuff like cleaning up after cooking.

I don’t understand this. How dirty are the toilets? Or do you mean 20 minutes for the whole bathroom?

Better things to do in life than clean 😂

Not very long, but this is because I am ridiculously good at cleaning. Quite against my will! But as a family carer for 20+ years with a very complex 24h care situation, you eventually turn all your powers to cleaning efficiency.

The first defence is organisation: everything has a home and surfaces are always cleared to zero when leaving a space, so cleaning and polishing takes just a few minutes. I spend no time tidying up. Then automation: robot hoovers, dishwasher, washing machine, etc. Then tagging mini cleans to existing habits, so the dishwasher is always loaded at the end of a meal, put on at night and emptied in the morning while the coffee brews. Bleach the bathroom at the end of a shower. Fold the clothes when a specific podcast drops, wash the windows to another. Mop yourself out the door in the morning on the way to work. And so on and on.

I clean much much much less now I'm not a carer as it's just unecessary (and possibly harmful) for a healthy person to live in a sanitised environment. It feels like just five or ten minutes a day - but this does conceal a level of habitual tidying and cleaning that is just happening all the time as a matter of course.

I know? Takes me a minute every day or dh does it.

Every minute of the fucking day it feels like

3 hours a day (I work evenings) plus a deep clean every Sunday,I can’t relax unless my house is clean and tidy,no shoes in the house!

20 minutes to clean one loo. Ohh.
I'll lower that 5 to 3 minutes.

About an hour a day, split up into lots of small chunks of time. No children but we do have a dog and three cats.

About half an hour a day between two of us so around 15 mins each.

One of us does stuff while the other is cooking dinner and then we finish whatever is left afterwards together.

Are you cleaning it with a toothbrush?! How on earth can it take 20 minutes to clean a toilet?.
Anyway to answer the question, as little as humanly possible. Life is too short to spend it cleaning. My house is clean enough. I have a few resident spiders that I leave well alone as they keep the flies away from my plants.

Maybe a couple of hours at the most, largely at the weekend.
A quick clean up of the kitchen after dinner, 10 mins max every day. Including loading and unloading the dishwasher. Shared with DH.
Laundry, cleaning the bathroom and mopping floors once at the weekend, less than an hour total. I will often leave products to sit and do their work then just rinse away.
The shower is the highest effort, getting the glass clean in a hard water area is an absolute bstrd.
I don't make beds, I prefer to pull back the duvet and leave them to air. I rarely dust. DH does the hoovering, lawn mowing and we change the beds together. I don't do any ironing as all our stuff is non iron.
We're fairly tidy, so don't often need to tidy up before cleaning.

Genuinely curious to know what you do in that time.

I'm aware house size and number of occupants would affect the answers but I'd have to reorganise and clean kitchen cupboards, clean windows and skirting boards, pull out the washing machine and clean the whole tiled bathroom weekly to spend 3 hours a day doing it (and even then im not sure it would take 18 hours Mon-Sat. Basically, I'd have to deep clean daily to spend that amount of time doing it! There'd be nothing left to do on the Sunday 😁

ETA: I don't iron. I have one dress that requires ironing and rarely wear it because of that.

Barely any. Husband does more than me. And it only needs to be "good enough" rather than the dreaded "sparkling".
Life's too short to waste cleaning!

Very little. Dh does most of bit. Just the 2 of us.. we have a dishwasher. Our house is always tidy and organised....just a bit dusty!
Daily the kitchen surfaces are cleaned. Floor swept weekly. Carpets hoovered every couple of weeks. Bathroom weekly. Dusting every couple of weeks.

Maybe put a frosted film over the glass? Or change it? I cba.