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?

“One of the living rooms….” 😂

I have a cleaner 3 hours every 2 weeks and it takes 1.5 days to look abit shabby again.
Pot washing wiping kitchen takes me 20 min a day.
I maybe hoover once a week now but when I had a dog it used to be every day.
Washing clothes is my worse enemy it just seems to get everywhere really fast about 5/6 loads over the weekend and then the basket is.full again by Sunday. I don't understand this but I'm too knackered after work to touch this.

I sometimes do a full clean of the house like the cleaner does but it takes me all day not the 3 hours like the cleaner. I deep cleaned the bathroom last week it took me 4 hours.

Kids and dogs add to it so I imagine the more you have the more you have to clean.

I know some people whose houses are immaculate who I know clean once a week and some people that are constantly cleaning whose aren't. I honestly think it's a personality trait and some people just naturally clean / tidy as they go without noticing.
I do not have this trait unfortunately. Neither do my kids

If you spend 1.5 hours cleaning after your kids leave the house, that means you don't work outside the house, so you have the time to dedicate to cleaning. A majority of people work outside the house, so obviously they don't have this amount of time to clean, it is quite easy to understand?. I am sure my house would be cleaner if I didn't have to work...that would free a lot of my time

2 adults 2 dogs in a 2 bed bungalow. Everything tidied away and all washing up done as we go, all surfaces cleaned as we go. Several times a week hoovering, once a fortnight all floors washed, bathroom deep cleaned.

5 bed house, one is an office, 2 living rooms, 2.5 bathrooms & 2 teenagers. We both work around 20 hours a week, each, from home (so tidy frequently and have the time to not be rushed trashing everything).
The cleaner comes 3 hours a week and does either upstairs or downstairs / half the house.

We do all beds, clothes washing, do the kitchen every day. Never do bathrooms or polishing or hoovering or windows because of the cleaner.

So id say her 3 hours a week plus another 2 hours between us.

Seems to be never ending in our house with 4 DC and 2 dogs. And it's never deep clean clean!
So maybe 10 hours a week(not including laundry/ironing)

DH and I each spend 2 hours cleaning at the weekend so that’s 4 hours total and then probably around 30 minutes each, each day doing tiny little tasks that seem inconsequential but add up to a clean and tidy house. Small house. Not much stuff. Try to put away not down and everything has a home.

My work is project-based, so I have periods of not working, but I don't spend my down time doing extra cleaning. What a waste.

I find that on cleaning threads, people will say you should do "5 minute jobs" while for example the kettle is boiling. But the things they deem to be 5 minute jobs, always take longer than that for me. I don't know how/why, maybe I'm just slow!

A surface kitchen clean, so load dishwasher, wipe sides, wash up odd bits by hand, like the cats bowls, sweep floor. Can easily take me half an hour. And that's just the minimum. Sure I suppose I could do one of those things in 5 minutes but I can't wipe the sides till the dishwasher is loaded and in the interim someone might come in and put other dishes on the side, which they can't put in the dishwasher because it's running. If I'm going to sweep, I may as well wash up at the same time as the cats bowls need to be picked up to sweep and so on.

I'd say I spend an hour a day on "essential" jobs. The rest of it, I struggle to find time/motivation to do. I probably manage another few hours through the week but I need to do more really.

Reading just a few of these comments makes me realise I do more than I think! I clear up cooking as I go- so to me that would be cooking not cleaning. I spend 10/20mins every morning clearing up the kitchen, wiping work surfaces, cleaning the sink again (how my family can get it so dirty I have no idea!) and the same again after lunch and after dinner- this includes loading / unloading dishwasher that is supposed to be my daughter’s job. At the moment dishwasher goes on twice a day, I wish I had 2! I get my son 2 to do the recycling. I have a robovac so floors are sorted, just need to do the corners every now and then and stairs. I also a mop (should be done more frequently!). I wouldn’t class laundry as a cleaning job but I put about 2 loads on a day, changing bedding and towels come under laundry. Tee towels and dish clothes are changed daily and washed once a week on a very hot wash. I hate folding laundry so this gets folded in one go with a film on, or as it comes off the line.. Life is too short to iron. The house bathroom is the boys bathroom and they clean it once a week, I thoroughly clean it once a month. They have bleach for daily use. The shower room I do once a week when I’m in the shower plus sink and toilet and the toilet gets done daily with bleach as does downstairs toilet. Everyone is responsible for their own rooms and they get reminded to do it. The downstairs gets titivated once a week, takes about half an hour. I do a deep clean every few months, or before I host the family!!
I don’t spend hours in one sitting doing it- too laborious. My house is by no means show room standard, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed if a friend unexpectedly dropped by, but thankfully my friends never do that, nor would I!
I do do more than I think, pats self on back.

I do notice there's an awful lot of daily bleach use mentioned on these cleaning threads. I use it very rarely as I don't think it's good to be breathing in or touching things that have been cleaned with it too much.

I love bleach, love the smell, love the knowledge that it kills everything, bacteria, mould(which I am very allergic to, triggers asthma/anllergy attacks ). My clothes don’t but I do. off!

I hate it. I've destroyed clothes and towels with it, the smell is rank, there's plenty of antibacterial sprays available.
I only use a squirt in the loo.

Yep. We basically have 3, but we call them the sitting room (no TV; we usually read there, and it’s attached to the dining room), the living room (where we watch TV most often), and the recreation room (for additional TV watching, and where we keep most of DD’s toys, some of my hobby stuff, and my art desk.)

Not the point of the thread but, that’s quite an assumption that having 1.5 hours to clean after the children leave the house means the OP doesn’t work outside the house! Plenty of people work shifts, long days, nights etc.

I agree, horrible stuff, and it's not healthy to be killing every bacterium in your environment anyway. The only things I use bleach for are getting stains out of white linens and sometimes cleaning odd bits of black mould (though vinegar works just as well).

Exactly! I legitimately rolled my eyes when that one PP was like “this takes 30 seconds.” No, no it does not.

I live in a tiny house. I have a cleaner who comes once a month and leaves it gleaming. We do change bed/clean/dust/hoover etc in between. Probably not as much as we should but I’m okay with that.

Shock horror people use bleach to kill toilet germs.

I clean once a week and it takes around 2.5 hours. Everyone keeps things clean though - washes up after meals, wipes down surfaces, puts bleach down loo after a poo, keeps surfaces tidy and clothes in the laundry basket etc. The cleaning itself is just dusting, sweeping, mopping and cleaning the bathroom.

7 hours on a Sunday to clean a bungalow with 2 adults! I have discovered the blind cleaner is actually brilliant at cleaning the big towel rail by the toilet,So I'll be sitting on the toilet, cleaning the radiator. It probably does take me about 30 seconds to clean a room,ok I might be exaggerating a bit, but I find it staggering how long people take to clean. My ex h had his own cleaning business, I cleaned big office blocks with him of an evening, having done a full shift nursing . He was a perfectionist and so were a lot of the airlines we worked for. Everything put away, not down,a place for everything, everything in its place. I grew up in a messy chaotic house holding, cannot be doing with it.am I the only person on here,who vacuums not "hoovers". Sometimes I sweep the floors. Because it's quicker..

Going back this I massively underestimated what I do on a Saturday so I was up at 7 and have just sat down (1.30). Gawd knows how many loads of washing I’ve done but I’ve stripped and remade all 4 beds, tidied the kitchen, stairs hallway landing and porch, done all my skirtings throughout? Hoovered all the way through, done the bathroom, cleaned out the airfryer, surface wiped all my bedrooms, mopped all downstairs, got rid of some stains on my stairway carpet and swept my back garden…. My husband has come home asking if I’m going to clean the car today 😂 now I’m in my bedroom scrolling debating if it’s too early for a G&T

Ooooh im gonna say max 10 mins a day which is tidying up after cooking dinner. So washing up the things that can’t go in the dishwasher and cleaning the work surfaces.

My DH does majority of cleaning and DS now does a bit as part of his chores

As little as possible. A former clean-phone, good grief what an almighty waste of time.

No longer able to do it to my satisfaction so have to employ a cleaner to help . DH plus dog plus kids mean that I feel that it is never done completely. House is big but I also think there is a lot of stuff in it too. Never seems to get left empty long enough to do a through clean . Skirting boards , window sills , shelves always seem to be in need of dusting .