'Blitzed the house from top to bottom...'

[NorrisToenail]

...'and it's only 10am'

How?! I see this so much on SM from friends and family, I admit I'm not very good at cleaning and probably take a hodge-podge approach but I can't imagine anyone cleaning their whole house in a few hours.

Is it me or aibu to think it's not possible?

Oh you see I think blitz to be a thorough clean of absolutely everywhere plus complete decluttering!
No wonder I never seam able to do it!
Blitzing means going through everything, and sorting out. So all that is left is stuff I want to keep. Then cleaning everywhere. I took blitz in the literal meaning!

I consider "blitzing" in this context to be getting through the housework quickly

I live alone and it would take me weeks to blitz mine

I have rare days like this where I’m up early. To me blitzing would be the surface work. So dust, hoover, mop, laundry away, bathroom and toilet clean and bedrooms tidy from clothes. In other words what I’d do if I had guests coming over.

A deep clean would involve lots of time in one room moving furniture to clean under things, decluttering, window cleaning etc. To me this is different to blitzing and gets done a couple times a year.

If I started at 6am by 10am I could have given my house a good overall clean. It too my an entire day, however to tidy (blitz) DDs room after she left for university (and she'd had a massive clear out of clothes and of course taken lots with her). It's so much easier to blitz it it's already blitzed- if you have DC it's so much harder!

Today I'll probably start at 9am and finish at 10m and then feel like I've spent most of the day cleaning.

Bathroom can easily take hour and half. Spray, let it soak, put bleach down (not on sprayed areas obvs) , let it work so wait, wait, wait, wait, scrub, rinse.
Waiting on sofa for things to "soak" counts as cleaning imo. 😁

or as in the German bombing in WW2 (suggesting thorough)?

This is what it means to me. But also an intense effort, as in, done to the exclusion of all else. I wouldn't use the term blitz for, say, cleaning a room within an inch of its life, but spread out over 3 days. Result the same, process different. Iyswim. It also presupposes a degree of 'oh my fucking god, the state of the place is unbearable, drastic action is needed'

I'd use blitz to mean literally clean in, under, behind, everything. Tidy drawers, behind and under wardrobes, everything.

So for me, there's no way someone could do that by 10am. If they can, it didn't need blitzing and it was just a standard clean.

It absolutely depends on the house - things like the size, finish and furnishings make a huge difference.

We lived in a small 3 bed rental with laminate floors, flat doors, surfaces and skirtings and barely any furniture and it could be cleaned adequately in 30 minutes, and blitzed in 2 hours.

Our own house has grooves everywhere, too much glass, and windows with smaller panes of glass, heavy furniture with more bloody grooves, fabrics that hold dirt, a shedding cat, bathrooms with gaps behind the toilet and sinks, and generally more rooms, more corners and more stuff. We’re not cluttered and tidying only takes 5 minutes but 2 hours would just about do a quick surface clean of one storey.

OP don’t believe show offs on social media. Why on earth would anyone post a vacuous update like that? Nobody cares!

Yeah, "blitzing" the whole house would take me three days (at least).
These people must live in the sort of minimalism I can hardly imagine, and certainly wouldn't want.

DH and I have no children and we’re both pretty rubbish at sitting still, so we generally get things put away and tidied up as we go. I usually cook and DH surface cleans the kitchen before bed each night. We’ll have a quick blast round with the hoover if needed. We’re both very outdoorsy and often come in filthy with helmets, boots, wet clothes, etc; but we made a boot room with lots of storage and now it’s easy to take things off and put away when we walk in the door. We have a laundry basket upstairs and downstairs which helps. I also avoid buying things for my house that look like they might collect dust!

I finish a bit earlier on a Friday, stick a couple of podcasts on and clean the whole house in a couple of hours. I’m fairly thorough - scrub two bathrooms, wipe kitchen cupboard doors, hoover skirting boards and window sills, take apart and clean the coffee machine, clean fridge out, mop, dust and usually get two loads of laundry through the machine and hung up. I have bit of a routine and don’t really stop. The motivation of sitting down on a Friday evening knowing that I have no chores or work to do until the Monday works for me.

I wouldn’t tell social media though. 😂

They are posting on social media.

The accepted response is "wow, that’s brilliant, can you come do mine now!"

Lies. It's all lies

If their house was already tidy then yes - someone efficient can do this, especially if they started early! No way on my house - by 10am I wouldn't have even done one room!

blitzing in my book which is proper scrubbing/ getting on your knees to get into nooks/crannies with a toothbrush and a cocktail stick

This is an actual thing that people do???

It depends what they mean by blitz.

If it's a full deep clean- no way. I'd need to book a week off work for that I reckon, and hire a skip.

If it's running the hoover round and sticking some bleach down the loo- easy.

It was clean and tidy before they started.

Or

They are lying.

Blitz doesn't mean thorough. It means fast.

The word Blitz in German means lightning, the Blitzkrieg was named this because it happened as fast as a lightning.

So blitzing the house means giving it a quick clean. I wouldn't worry, OP.

I always wonder about the people who get to sit down and relax in a beautifully clean and sparkly home. Mine is never “sparkly” and the jobs are never done. I spend quite a lot of time cleaning and I get to a point where I’m like that will do. But I know there’s still a messy cupboard or marks on the wall or dust on top of the wardrobes or the grout is stained or there’s limescale somewhere…
And I know that someone will have been in the kitchen and left crumbs everywhere too! Maybe I’m just bad at cleaning.

My house is always tidy and I clean round everyday so a top to bottom blitz ( large 5 bed) with mopping etc would probably take me 2 hours? I wouldn’t need to tidy so it would just be the cleaning.

It’s just a sudden/fast/intense clean. Get up and go. Says nothing about the depth or quality of the cleaning.

So yeah, I could get up at 7am and blitz my house by 10am. Three hours of fast cleaning. But I don’t.

If it weren't identifying I'd post pics of my squalor. That'd cheer you all up!

I did say I'm not very good at it! I probably leave too long between cleans tbh.

Solidarity. In exactly the same situation. Planning a major refurb and thinking 'what's the point? it's going to be torn apart anyway.'

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain it's disheartening isn't it? Even a coat of paint isn't going to cut it here!