'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?

Some people have small, new houses with minimal possessions, no pets, no kids.

So yeah if you live alone and you’re cleaning a 2 up 2 down new build with minimalist decor then it’s not going to take long at all.

Yep, 100% my situation as well. Currently googling about 'is it normal to be so anxious over planning this and turning my home upside down and getting people in?' and comfortingly, (or not) it is. Doing nothing for my anxiety ATM.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain - my worry is the 70's tiles we have under the carpet. I think they may have asbestos in which means we have to screed the whole floor throughout. The only way to do that is to move out completely (and consult specialists) - this keeps me awake at night! I imagine that renovating is up there on one of those "most stressful things in life" lists. Good luck!

Oh yeah. Victorian flat, so you can bet there's asbestos somewhere. And a plumber this week gave me the good news 🙄that my bathroom pipework is obsolete. Cue more budget panic. 🤔

I have a sparkly home but I also have a cleaner. She gets down to deep cleaning all the time only because I don't have piles of clutter all over. I've noticed this in other people's homes too. Just piles of stuff on dressers, kitchen tops, cupboards , which isn't even used. In my home every single thing has a place and purpose. We don't have random draws of junk and my kids don't have bits and pieces of toys all over that are not used. When my cleaner comes she doesn't have to waste time shifting things around or tidying up because everything has a place and she just gets straight into deep cleaning. Even before I had a cleaner and before kids I always lived by things need a place and purpose. I don't keep things 'just in case'.

It takes me around 3 hours. I had to do it yesterday because it’s half term here so DC have been home all week under FIL’s supervision with DH and I working. I’m on campus Monday-Thursday so Friday is always my cleaning day but it never takes me as long as it did yesterday. FIL lets DC do as they please basically so the house was in a real state.

I had to do 4 loads of washing, vacuum and mop of whole house, blitz of bathroom and kitchen, cleaned windows, cleaned the fridge, tidied all bedrooms, changed bedding& watered plants from memory. Due to the disgrace it had been left in, it wiped 3 hours of my life. Glad they’re at school next week so it will stay mostly tidy and that typically means I only spend an hour cleaning on a Friday.

We have had lots of renovations the last few years. You end up sorting and throwing away to within an inch of your life when your trying to squeeze everything into onto clean room. We have also down an international move, where it costs a small fortune to move, so there’s no point keeping anything just in case.

Means house is now clutter free, and quick to clean. If I had to move now, I could pack entire house up within a day. (10 years ago it took us weeks)

Hopefully as yours is older less chance of asbestos ? (Not sure but didn't they go for that in a big way in the 60s and 70s?) - I fear we will have to do more in terms of plumbing/wiring/heating than I have in mind too.. sounds like you are further down the line than us as ours is all "we must" at the mo!

You're right of course.
I don't know how you decide when something has outlived its usefulness though? Anything from mugs to pens. When do you decide its too much or needs chucking?

@NovemberRain23 - when it’s taking up too much space you don’t have, time you don’t have to clean or sort, and barely use item. Then it becomes more of a hindrance than useful

If you spare mugs are making it awkward to get kitchen clean or organised, and don’t fit really, and you don’t use then just donate. Just buy back some from charity if you every have a hot chocolate party and need 28 mugs for one day

My baby has started waking at 5am

My house has never been so clean 🤣

Yeah if I started a week before 😂

Our cleaning lady used to do it. She only cleaned... no tidying involved. It's the tidying that takes up the time.

Still at the planning/measuring/what do I want? stage, that was a repair that wouldn't wait. Didn't need that additional aggro, tho.

If you keep up with tidiness and cleanliness, a blitz is fairly easy. My twice a week blitzes involve cleaning skirting boards, hoovering secret dusty corners, cleaning out wardrobes etc. I get it all done between school run and lunchtime easily, then let everything dry out/air out and put the house back together before school pick ups. But I also clean and tidy and hoover every day without fail, so deep cleans are easier and quicker whilst still being thorough

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain I suspect we will reach a point where something pushes us similarly!

Well, in German, blitz literally means lightning. Make of that what you will. My own interpretation would be that she she gave the house a quick maintenance going-over to whip it into shape (things like a tidy, a hoover, wipe kitchen/dining surfaces). My cleaner takes 5 hours to get our place done (kitchen, bathrooms, windows, floors, dusting, etc), and that’s AFTER I’ve ‘blitzed’ the house with a tidy up so that she can get straight to the cleaning, so I doubt a blitz before 10am is a full-on clean unless her house is small and immaculate.

I can clean my whole house in 2-3 hours, but I am a minimalist.

I live in a 2 bedroom Victorian terrace (with a dining room also) and it has taken me 4 hours this morning to completely "blitz" the house... Vacuuming everywhere including using all the tools, moving some furniture out of the way, hoovering said furniture too, changing beds, dusting, putting washing on /putting it away, cleaning the bathroom... Dang, it is v v v clean - not a dog hair in sight for at least 2 minutes before the dog decided the coast was clear 🙄🙄

I didn't realise people used the phrase to 'blitz' in different ways.

Before we could afford a cleaner, and when my dc were still children, we'd often "blitz" the house altogether in an hour at the weekend. To me, it means 'focused, targeted', like a burst of energy concentrating on getting it done'. So me, dh, and the dc could do the house in an hour or so without difficulty.
But, before this thread, I've not heard the phrase used to mean "deep clean as if you are about to put your house up for sale".

I’m up at 5am and will have cleaned bathrooms, hoovered cleaned kitchen, dusted changed bed linen & put washing on by 8am. 3 hrs is ample time to clean 5/6 rooms especially if you regularly clean.
I can change 10 beds and clean 10 bedrooms, hoover and dust in 5 hrs when I was working in housekeeping

If "blitzing" a house can be done by 10am, it didn't need doing in the first place.

Probably not a deep or thorough clean then? Depends on the size of the house, fitness levels, how often it is done, efficiency...and of course standards.

What one person would call tided up a bit, did a basic vac throughout, shoved some bleach down the loo and gave some surfaces a wipe someone else might call would call a blitz from top to bottom and someone else would it call pottering...who knows what they really mean, and why they are sharing it!

I had a glorious month off in between jobs this year and did exactly this.

I'm up extremely early, did the school drop (I'm overseas and schools start super early at 720) do a workout then did alllllll the housework. Was done by 10 am and in the garden with a book.

Couldn't believe how much free time I had and was hugely envious of people who don't have to work!

I am a very very tidy clean person though (a tidy house calms me) so it wasn't like I was starting from scratch.

You can do this if you spend 15 mins in each room:
Bedrooms; strip bedlinen, empty bins, open windows, quick dust and polish
bathroom - quick scrub of tub, basin and loo, polish mirrors and taps, change towels
Living room - chuck rubbish, tidy stray items into a basket to sort later, plump cushions, dust and polish
Kitchen - wipe surfaces, empty bin, reload dishwasher, quick mop of floor.

Then run a hoover through the house - not a thorough under beds and behind sofas - just the bits that are visible.

That's doable in 2 hours for a 3-bed 1 bath house. 3 hours for a bigger house.