When it's messy, hours and hours and hours without ever getting anywhere. I go to clean the bathroom, but there are no clean rags in the cupboard, so I go to grab them from the laundry, get distracted, fold half a load, remember I was doing the bathroom, go back. Open the cleaning cupboard in the kitchen, 27 precariously stacked bottles fall out, one had a loose top and spills all over the kitchen floor. I mop with the rag I've collected for the bathroom, realise how filthy the floor is, mop the rest whilst pushing the other bottles out of the way, and that's an hour, the bathroom is untouched, the laundry's a bigger mess than before, and the only thing to show for it is a shiny kitchen floor. Which won't last as I really should've wiped down all the surfaces first, so I either do that next, spreading crumbs and footprints all over the shiny floor, or else I decide stuff it, make a cup of tea, because st least the kitchen floor isn't sticky any more, even if that wasn't actually what if planned to do at all.
Repeat all day/week/month.
But, when it's actually tidy, it takes me 10-15 minutes I the morning and a similar amount of time in the evenings. Because when it's tidy, there's already a bottle of spray and a rag in the bathroom. And the loo takes seconds because I did it the day before, so nothing is soaked in. And because when it's tidy, I notice the stray teabags staining the counter and the trail of sugar across the floor, and I know where the dustpan and brush are, and it takes seconds to sweep it up again.
It's usually somewhere in the middle but I regularly have both extremes. Right now, our cleaner does 2 hours a week. Which is enough to properly Hoover and clean the floors, Hoover the furniture, so the deeper cleaning bits. So I just need to process laundry (takes 5 minutes to fold one load and another 5 to put it all away. Takes hours to try to iron stuff which has been stuffed, creased, into a laundry basket, piled with other clean creased things, and left for a couple of weeks).
I empty the dishwasher first thing in the morning, (5 mins), and then it takes seconds to dump plates etc. in it as they get used. As opposed to dumping them in the sink, then having to spend ages loading the dishwasher, cleaning the stains out of the sink, and picking up the broken pieces from the casserole which smashed to the floor as too much was piled up.
Right now, this week, I'm in ten minutes 2-3 times a day mode. And loving it. All rooms are shiny, kitchen smells lovely, anyone could walk in.
But I'm horribly aware it only takes a couple of days where I don't keep on top of things for it all to descend into chaos again. And then it takes months to bring it back into order.
Sounds stupid, but I sometimes pay myself to do it. Which is if nothing else enough for a takeaway or a book or a fancy bath bomb or similar. Just a recognition of the fact it's hard work to stay motivated at doing it when it's so quickly undone by everyone, including myself, who lives here.