Keeping on top of deep cleaning the house

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I'd say we're generally pretty clean & tidy

Our house is always (just about) visitor ready. We never let dirty dishes accumulate. We wipe the counters before & after every food prep.

We have a cat so we keep on top of hoovering due to her hairs.

It seems orderly. However i had yesterdsy off work & decided to deep clean our bedroom. Omg! Once i started looking at the skirting boards & the edges where the wall meets the ceiling, in the corners, behind stuff erc - seriously, the dust & cobweb levels were shocking

Today I'm tackled the bathroom. Again sink, toilet & bath cleaned v regularly but when I pulled out the storage unit for products! Again dusty, hairy, just generally filthy

I work full time, so does dh. We both do equal amounts of cleaning but somehow we're obviously not keeping on top of it all.

I don't want to spend all weekend every weekend deep cleaning! I need down time too

how do you all manage it?

Ultimately I want to enjoy my home tje way i love being in a hotel. I want to get it to that level & then keep it like that. I feel I'm missing some vital method or system..

We don't have a cleaner.

I think you need to get this into perspective. Sort out the level of cleanliness that is necessary to actually maintain your health and wellbeing and let go of the rest.

I like my home to be clean and orderly as well but I don't want to live in a hotel or a show home and more to the point I'm not prepared to spend all my free time cleaning to achieve this. There's a trade-off between living with a decent standard of cleanliness and order and tipping into something a bit obsessional and it sounds like you're veering towards the latter.

No one need sterile skirting boards. It won't make you ill and no one else will notice if there's a bit of cat hair in areas which aren't accessible and if you're worrying that much about it that it prevents your ability to relax, you might want to think about getting some professional help with this.

Same here. I daren’t look close up at my house sometimes. Maybe just pick a room once a month for a proper deep clean & listen to a decent podcast while you do it.

We're like you in that we keep on top of the basic stuff as we go every week.

Twice a year in spring and autumn, I do what my mum called, 'Bottom the house out' - wipe all the paintwork down, declutter, clean into the corners and give it a thorough once over. I suppose this takes about a day.

Then, every week, when I fancy it or am bored, I pick an spot and do a thorough sort out and clean in that area. I never spend more than about 40 minutes on this.

Two days and 40 minutes a week seems to be enough to keep things clean enough to feel like we're living somewhere nice without ever feeling a slave to it.

I don't know OP it's hard. I try to keep on top of everything but find the deep cleans harder to fit in. I don't have the answer but maybe if you try to deep clean one area every weekend then you'll keep on top of it to a degree.

I think most people have houses like this, unless you’re an obsessive cleaner.
Yes, it’s necessary to push the bed / bedside tables / sideboards over to get behind it and there’s a tonne of dust etc. I do this once every 6 months or so, sometimes every year
But I think that’s normal for most people??

Have you tried the organised mum method TOMM. I tried it but it’s to intensive if you work full time. I think it could work with tweaking

Daily laundry is one of the tasks and she claims the first days tasks takes one second (to press start int he washer) but then I’m out at work by the time it finishes so it can’t sit there all day!? Kind of put me off - felt it was for SAHM. I’m sure the idea is excellent (30 minutes a day plus level 1 jobs like dishwasher and surface) it’s around 1 hour per night. Plus cooking. It quite a lot!

Never look to hard. I will do a deep clean every so often when I get a sudden burst of energy but for general day to day cleaning if I cant see it I ain't cleaning it

We have a cleaner who comes for 4 hours once a week and then every 3 months we have 3 cleaners who come for a 6 hour day of deep cleaning.
We hate spending our weekends cleaning and can afford to sub it out so we do. Worth every penny it costs tbh, we’d never keep on top of it because we cba but do enjoy living in a clean house.
Sorry, not much help other than to suggest buying in help if you can afford it at all.

That’s me too. Out of sight, out of mind.

Most people don't give a shit

Hotels are generally gross if you look closely enough. The whole concept of a hotel is gross.

Has your washing machine got a timer? You could load it the night before and put the timer on to be finished for when you want to hang it up or put it in the dryer/on the airer.

Quarterly deep clean and then a room a day during the week and tidying as I go. I can generally do a room in about 15 minutes tops if I keep on top of that routine.

Edited to add I really don’t have much stuff so it’s easier to keep on top of the house and cleaning.

Ours just doesn't get deep cleaned really. The only time I managed to keep it clean and tidy was during lockdown and I was only working 9-3 every day (usually 8.30-4.30 or 5ish). I used to come home and blitz everywhere as I felt I was skiving not working my usual hours.

Since then I@m just too knackered to do more than the basics after work. With having to ferry young adults and their stuff seemingly every few weeks moving stuff from university to home and back again, and their belongings everywhere in the house it just never feels tidy. And when there's stuff everywhere it's hard to clean around. So I just leave it.

Thanks v much for the replies!

We keep on top of laundry but storage is a perennial issue so sometimes clean, folded clothes accumulate upstairs in yhe spare room which bothers me even if I can't see it.

I'm glad to read that others struggle a bit with fitting this in too.

I think over the next few weeks we'll do it room by room to de-clutter & deep clean in addition to the usual day to day cleaning.

Once all rooms are sorted then maybe a good idea will be to go back over 1 room a month to deep clean, starting from the 1st one we do now (our bedroom).

That way it shouldn't get too bad in-between.

I want our house to be a place i can look forward to coming home to & to love being here. Not feeling like everywhere I look needs attention. That's not relaxing to me.

Mostly I ignore it but it sort of nags in the back of my mind a bit. We have an old house & there's always somethingthat needs fixing or maintaining.

I don't think I'm obsessing or need help with this. I just want to enjoy spending time here & making it as inviting as we can.

We're immensely lucky to have a house & sometimes I think i just don't make the most of it.

Dh & I had a good chat today & we've resolved to make a list of all the niggly things that need at attention, finish some of the maintenance & finally get it to a finish we're happy with..

I'm on a big declutter vibe right now & that's going to help I hope too.

I clean every week or sometimes twice a week (we have two sausage dogs), and I pay a cleaner to come on a monthly basis to do a deep clean.

@CurlyhairedAssassin We too have young adult dc in & out & moving to & from university accommodation! Adding to the feeling of untidiness

Get a decorator in. Or a cleaner. Life is too short for deep cleans. IMHO. I haven't got a cleaner at the moment. But I think I will get one. Not had one for quite a while.

Agree. Especially if carpets are on the floor. Yuk!

I’m thinking of doing the same ( monthly deep clean cleaner) We have house rabbits and 2 young adult kids at home (one home from uni) and I’m on cancer treatment. What kind of deep clean does yours do?

As someone once said - don’t make a fetish of house work.

Deep cleaning is twice a year, just before Christmas and in may half term. Rest of the time it's a general clean, about two hours on a weekend morning.

I empathise with this! DD rented one room in a house. Judging by the amount of stuff she’d accumulated, you’d have thought she had her own house! 🙄

I have a low bar for cleaning. I don’t think I’ve ever deep cleaned, only heard of it 2 years ago. I clean before guests- normal type cleaning.

I think you sound like you are more on top of this than most. I wish my house was always visitor ready! But essentially I don't care enough to keep it that way.