How long do you spend cleaning?

[StrongerThanIThought76]

Ok so I've always been messy. Untidy. But not to 'Hoarders' extremes, just a bit too much stuff and lack organisation. Throw in a messy divorce, 2 kids (10 & 13) who don't see their dad), a full time job and I just can't keep on top of things. I had a visit from a professional home organiser 6 months ago and we went through the house over the course of a couple of days decluttering. Lots of trips to the tip/charity shops later and I now only have things I need and love and everything in theory has a place..

But. I can't maintain it. I know I should do it little and often, but I can't. I've literally spent all day today doing housework and I'm not halfway there.

So how long do you lovely people spend keeping your homes tidy and clean, spick and span, all the jobs done including keeping on top of the little garden jobs, over the course of a week? Average 3 bed semi, only one loo.

I'm just clueless, and embarrassed that I haven't got the foggiest idea about how long we should spend keeping the place looking nice!

We have a cleaner once a week for 5 hours. We have a fairly big 6 bed house. She does all hoovering, cleans kitchen & bathrooms, quite a bit of tidying and dusting, washes kitchen floor some weeks, other weeks does windows etc. She does all ironing - usually one reasonable size normal ironing basketful that takes her about an hour.it would have dh and ds shirts in, mostly. She strips beds either weekly or bi-weekly, depending on what else is to be done. She puts through the towels in a big wash and hangs them out before she goes.

That's basically the 'cleaning' my house gets. Beyond this I spend at least an hour, maybe 2 every day cleaning.& wiping down kitchen, loading and unloading dishwasher, collecting and putting on loads of washing usually a load a day on average, hanging out, folding. Then each night I pick up every thing, tidy the toys, Hoover with the minihoover under the table where the boys have hurled spaghetti, wash and sterilize bottles, pick up and chuck away random crap like junk mail, boxes, broken toys, old nappies left accidentally under the sofa...

It sounds like a lot and yet our house is not pristine. I like to think it's clean for the kids to grow up in without visible dirt, but not a show home. I don't think for example hoovering /beds changing/towels changing needs doing more than once a week. Some things like washing skirting boards or doing the garden can really be done about every 6 months!

How long do I spend cleaning?

Too long and not long enough. Too long because I'm not going to be on my deathbed wishing I'd done more housework. Not long enough, clearly, for my efforts to make a blind bit of difference to the state of the house. Loos, bathrooms, kitchen floor (when I can keep the family's feet off it long enough to dry) and hoovering (when I can find the floor under the teen clutter) is about all I can manage in the week. Sorry not to be more helpful.

Probably about an hour everyday. However it can sometimes take longer as I have a 5 month old. So I usually have to space out it out throughout the day when he takes a nap.

Obviously if I need to wash bedding which is about once a week, then it takes longer.

I think the best thing you can do is declutter. The less stuff you have, the less time you need maintaining it. Also making sure everything has its place usually helps.

When I was a single parent with 3 girls and working, we had a housework rota. (Mostly because I was fed up with them moaning if I asked them to lay the table, and being told "I laid the table last week/month/year")
Each Tuesday was housework evening and they had to do their bedrooms and one other job each (hoover the stairs, or clean the bathroom etc)
I was so bloody fed up with the arguing about who did what we made up a rota and pinned it to the fridge so there was no argument. Mind you, it was a 3 week rota over 5 days and you needed a degree to understand who was doing what on what days. However, the rule was if you misread it and did someone else's job by accident, tough bloody luck, you still had to do your own! Concentrated the mind!
Now they're not here I still have my own sort of rota, different things on different days- e.g. shopping one day, upstairs one day, downstairs on another. If it gets missed one week it doesn't matter too much as at least it's been done in the recent past!
Always try and wipe the kitchen surfaces down every night, chuck a bit of bleach down the loo at night, try and do one area on the same evening each week (kitchen Monday, lounge Tuesday etc) and it soon becomes habit.

Sorry, I just realised you've already tried decluttering. Have you tried getting storage boxes?

I usually keep anti -bacterial wipes in the bathroom and clean it daily. A quick wipe around the sink and the loo, takes a couple of minutes tops.

3 hours a day is 21 hours a week. Who has 21 hours a week to do housework???

OP, I would pick one room and keep it "nice". As for the rest, clean bathrooms and kitchen and clothes, and as I keep telling my kids, no-one has died yet so it can't be that bad.

I do maybe half hour a day, but I have a loose rota that OH & I follow.

Mondays & Fridays is hoovering, both up & down.
I clean the bathroom when DS is in the bath.
Polish Tuesdays.
Laundry gets put away as soon as it's dry as I don't iron & OH sends his out.
OH changes bedding on a Sunday when we're up.
I steam clean the kitchen floor almost every day as it takes less than 5 minutes.

It's just staying on top of the oven cleaning & deep cleaning now & again but I try not to spend too long on it or just leave until next day.

Did just do a massive declutter which has helped immensely in keeping the house more & more tidy.

I do a lot whilst doing other things - so, inbetween mouthfuls of cereal, I'll be unloading the dishwasher, starting the next load, sorting washing and setting off a load, folding clean dry clothes, opening post, sweeping the floor, cleaning the surfaces, etc.
I also ensure dc do their bit - for example cooking evening meals
I also am fairly relaxed about housework generally - if people come to my house, they generally come to spend time with us, and I've never yet found a visitor running their finger along the skirting boards to see how clean they are.
(This ^ is for the first 25 yrs of home ownership)

Now, best use EVER of £20 a week is a cleaner for 2 hours a week.

It's not setting aside 21 hours a week for housework though, it's continuous doing of bit and bobs, in between everything else you do. No one else in my house 'sees ' things that need doing. I am here all day all week so it's inevitable that I will do a couple of hours general housework. I then probably average an hour or so a day of proper housework like vacuuming, dusting etc.

StrongerThanIThought76

And do these times include what everyone in the house is doing to help? ('Cause everyone knows how useful the kids and other halves are, obvs)

I wonder sometimes on here are people just saying that their man and children help just to save face.

How long do i spend cleaning? Erm, as little as possible. Probably about 15 minutes a week and then a couple of hours every 2/3 months. I wipe the kitchen counter and the dining table every now and then and load/unload the dishwasher while I am waiting for dinner to cook. Every few months I will clean the bathroom, dust furniture/clean a window. I do like it when the house is spic and span but not enough to waste so much time keeping it spotless. There are way more fun things to do.

However, DH does the laundry and hoovering regularly as he is very domesticated. There is only me, DH and DS5 so the place doesn't seem to get very dirty.

Ha, my ex did NOTHING at all inside the house. Never changed a nappy, zero housework, the garden was done by my mum when she came to stay.

Apart from a 6 monthly blitz that basically started with 'I'm sick of living in this fucking shithole' and ended up 3 hours later with everything that wasn't in the right place shoved in binbag and boxes under the stairs a là Monica. I'd then spend days searching for things (chequebook, housekeys, even the pushchair once that he tidied into his car then took to work).

I'm much less cluttered now, it's just mine and the kids' mess now but my god it's soul destroying

Generally, a couple of hours every Monday or Tuesday. I vacuum, mop, clean the bathroom, clean the sink and draining rack and board, dust and clean all mirrors and screens. Week 1, I vacuum upstairs and down. Week 2, I vacuum downstairs and dust and clean all screens and mirrors.
Daily, I tidy and air all rooms, cook, usually wash up twice and wipe down the kitchen surfaces once or twice, so no more than an hour every day. Most food I make takes 30 minutes preparation and cooking, although occasionally, I spend an hour or ninety minutes cooking. I try to have specific days for laundry and do 6 or 7 loads a week; usually 2 on Friday, 2 on Sunday and 2 on Monday. I change bedding on Sundays: alternating mine and DS's each week.

As a previous poster said, if you miss something out one week, it doesn't matter, as you know you'll do it next time around.

I do half an hour every day probably (broken up into chunks).

Maybe an hour at the weekend.

My house is virtually show home standard 90% of the time.

BUT
I have no animals
I have no kids
I have a flatmate that cleans equally
Our flat is quite small
I have minimal stuff

I think when I add kids, animals and DP into the mix in a few years I'll be wishfully looking back on this time in my life

I've lived in some truly terrible HMOs in the past.

It taught me to hat if someone in the house is not pulling their weight then the house will be a shit hole.

If everyone cleans up after themselves as they go along then it will be a nice clean environment.

It takes just one person to fuck it up.

About an hour every day packing dishwasher, emptying, clearing & wiping counters and folding washing.

An hour or two each Friday tidying and sorting when the cleaners are here.

An hour or two in the garden at the weekend.

About 2 hours each Saturday & Sunday doing laundry.

As an example, I spent three hours this afternoon hanging up laundry, cutting the grass and sweeping leaves, then emptying the dishwasher. It feels like a big chunk of the day, and that is with cleaners coming in to do the actual cleaning.

I blitz clean the house on a Friday night within about two hours, in that time I do bedding, hoovering, clean the bathroom and kitchen and a general tidy up.

In the morning, if DH is working then one of us will take care of the kids and the other will do dishes and rough tidy up of kids toys etc.

DH does most of the laundry but that doesn't take too long (30mins every second day) as we iron very rarely.

About every 2 months I have a more thorough clean, I will go round with the duster, clean the fridge and oven and anything else that needs to be cleaned.

Oh Stronger my DP is like that. He moans about "living in a shithole" but he does nothing! His idea of tidying up is to stuff everything in cupboards and drawers but in no logical order. His mother spent all her time tidying and ironing and caring for him and his sisters leaving his dad time to have a second family elsewhere!

Are your kids tidying up after themselves? I endlessly point things out to my kids 'you need to hang that towel up' or 'there's the loo brush, you need to get rid of your skid marks'

Think of it as helping them become fully able young adults.

Tidy as you go. When you make a mess, clear it up immediately.

Declutter more extremely. It took me 2 years in total as I needed to go through all my stuff three times before completely steam lined. The more severe I have been, the tidier my house. It's very easy to stay tidy now despite 4 kids and dogs

Streamlined!

Get rid of more. Less stuff is easier.

It feels like I'm losing with the cleaning as the children just mess it up straight away dd16 and ds12. But I do half hour in the morning and an hour in the evening which includes cooking dinner. I'm also on my own, work full time and study 18hrs a week. I work,clean,study Monday to Friday, it's full on and I get up at 5:30 but then have time for the family and myself at weekends.

I wonder sometimes on here are people just saying that their man and children help just to save face.

Well, I don't have children, but 'my man' does more than half the housework. He doesn't 'help', though - it's not my job that he graciously lends a hand to. He lives here.

These men who do nothing - is this some sort of imbalance that developed post-children (post mat leave?) or do people really choose to have a baby with a man like this?

RJ Who has 21 hours a week to do housework???

I'm lucky enough to be a sahm but this (for me) is easy. Also it depends what people are including as housework. For me this means, half an hour in the morning cleaning kitchen and sorting laundry. Half an hour at 9am wiping kitchen and bathroom cleaning loo and hoovering downstairs. Half an hour at 2pm sorting folding and putting away washing. Half an hour evening putting dishwasher on then emptying sorting more laundry and general tidy.

On Mondays I do an extra half hour changing beds and hoovering upstairs. On Wednesdays I do food shopping, wipe fridge, clean fish tank, and ironing.

If I added in extra picking up, sorting, cooking, multiple wipings I probably do more than 3 hours but I don't notice. And I do have a life besides cleaning.

I do very little on Sundays.

I've been patronized on mnet before for hoovering everyday but so what?I have a small house, a dog, dc, and time (it takes 10 min).

I do like living in a clean and tidy house and have certain things I have to get done but never care or judge about anyone else. However....

Theanswer
Every few months I will clean the bathroom Really? I find this quite grim tbh.

21 hours a week? Really? I only do a few a week.

Margaret. My dh used to do loads around the house, but then I left my job and he changed his job to one with very long hours. So now he doesn't do much at all. Yes it's fucked up. I'd prefer it if he could put his plate in the dishwasher or put his coat away, but the more I do the less he does. I think it's a bit pathetic on his part but can't be arsed to bring it up!