Keeping on top of deep cleaning the house

[NewShoesForSpring]

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've got a couple of robovacs and they are the best for getting under furniture and places you can't see. Run daily they remove the need to do floors on the weekend. I also bought a little hand held vacuum. It's about the size of a hair dryer. Perfect to get dust off the ceiling fans and dust books in bookcases. Also great to quickly run behind furniture. I got it to help clean the runners on windows.

My duster is a lovely grabby microfiber one that really sticks the dust to it. Throw it in the wash to clean. I got it to dust the skylight - it screws on to a really long handle.

You can buy a skirting board cleaner - really handy.

I'm not the best at cleaning. Really don't enjoy it, but I do like the results. So i try to find little ways to keep on top without too much extra effort.

How about choosing one room to keep as spotlessly clean as you can manage and having more reasonable expectations about the other rooms? That way you're not spending all your spare time cleaning and tidying but you still have one spotless room to retreat to to and enjoy when you want to.

My flat is rarely visitor ready, but that's life and seems to be the case for the majority of us.

Clean skirting boards look nice though.

Deep clean is something people do in rental properties before moving on. Thorough spring clean is more like most people's reality about twice a year

Less stuff less to clean

@k1233 I like the sound of your duster & skirting board cleaner- can you share where you bought them please? Thanks a million.

By deep clean i meant taking products off the shelves in the bathroom, dumping empty dried up bottles, washing the shelving, wiping the walls behind before putting good products back. I dont do that on a weekly basis.

We clean the sink, cabinet the sink is on, toilet, bath & shower every week & I wipe out the sink & wipe the toilet seat etc wotj antibacterial wipes every other day in between cleans. And the wooden floor gets hoovered weekly.

But that's probaby it most weeks so doing stuff like cleaning shelving, wiping skirting boards etc feels like deep clean to my mind

Just do what my Mum does. Takes off her glasses and VOILA dust cannot be seen :)

This is my duster - not sure if you can get them in the UK
https://sabco.com.au/shop-by/retailer/bunnings/feathered-microfibre-duster-with-extendable-handle/

The skirting board cleaner is the one in the pic. I've got severe degeneration in my spine and hips, so bending to clean skirting boards hurts. It's just a quick zip around with this and all dust free.

Sorry forgot to attach the pic

I have very little, deliberately.
No carpets anywhere.
Nothing stored under beds/sofas.
Nothing on the kitchen counters.
Everything is stored away.

Sounds sterile, but I have large paintings on the walls that bring colour, the furniture is modern, plants etc.

All that means that to deep clean my bedroom takes an hour. I have two bed stands with 3 drawers each, in one of the drawers I have night cream, serum and hand cream, one has the kindle, a book and a notepad. The other bed stand only has a box of tissues in it. The rest is empty.
Half my wardrobe is empty. I put away the winter clothes, in boxes.

I don’t keep Tupperware, I have 4 glass ones, two frying pans and 3 pots.
You get the gist, everything is minimal.

What also helps is say my sowing machine is stored with a box on top of it that has the threads, the scissors, tape measure etc, everything is in one place. Makes it easier to keep track. Same for wrapping paper and ribbons and scissors and sellotape. So when I need to clean, I just have one or two things to move about.

HTH

I'm 58. I've never done a deep clean and I suspect no one else I know has either.

Same. Our house is tidy, orderly, looks clean and smells fresh. The kitchen sides are always wiped down and clean, and the toilets are scrubbed and bleached multiple times a week.

But I might hoover under the bed once a year. I only hoovered under the sofa after 7 years of living here because I was redecorating (!). I only wipe down a bit of woodwork if there's a big stain staring me in the face. I go around with a feather duster every few months and try to tackle cobwebs. Once in a blue moon, I get a bathroom wipe and remove all of the dust and hair from behind the toilet.

It'll do 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have just decluttered one cupboard in one of the kid's bedrooms and got rid of so much crap. Ten blue ikea bags worth of baby/children's books. It's a huge cupboard. Couldn't believe the amount of crap in there. It's now being repurposed to store hobby related stuff for one of the DC. Can't believe things got that bad. Took 12 hrs to get bedrooms switched over yesterday and clear all the mess. Feel so much better for it.

Know what you mean OP. It's difficult to keep on top of household stuff.

I've got a bad back so decided to get a cleaner. She was fantastic the first time she came but went rapidly downhill spending most of the time on her phone.

@BuddhaAtSea I aspire to my bedside cabinets being like yours . I would like my whole bedroom to be calm and tidy but I definitely need to lose some “stuff”😂

Same for us actually. I'd forgotten that this is a big part of how we keep on top of the house. Ruthless decluttering and a one-in-one-out policy has left us with clear sides, nothing under any bed, and lots of empty space in cupboards and drawers. Definitely the way to go.

Make a chart. List ALL the rooms/spaces in your house one by one, plus tasks like "clean all windows inside" "clean carpets through house" "check and lubricate all window catches/hinges". Decide how often these need doing, then allocate one task a week. So every week, as well as your basic routine, you either deep-clean one room or space, or you do a maintenance task. When you get to the end of the list, start again at the top.

My house is in serious need of a deep clean. I don't work but I have 4 kids 2 with autism and one is 4 months old so I do t have the time normally or ghe energy (ever). It causes me serious anxiety if my stepsons come to visit as their houses are pristine and new (mines a 1930s bungalow with peeling paint in the bathroom and cracks in the walls)

I wish I'd could decanter massively, but silly little things like my middle son only drinks out of bottles so I have about 5 sports bottles for him in the cupboard and my husband has 3 as he always takes a bottle to bed. Also my other kids have 2 bottles each so we have a cupboard full of the bloody things. Then there's all the tupperware i use for packed lunches to store chopped fruit. It never ends

This is what I do. Plus, like @BuddhaAtSea, I ruthlessly declutter so there's never too much stuff to sort out or clean. Skirting boards are hoovered with the little brush attachment every time I hoover a room (weekly, mostly).

That’s what my cleaner does weekly!

deep clean is hoovering under bed, pull out drawers and clean behind, remove everything from shelves, wipe dust then put back. It takes her 25 hours for the whole house.

A pp already mentioned TOMM. When my standards were a bit higher, this was the only thing I ever stuck with. Premise is fitting in 30 mins a day, weekdays only and focusing on one room, or set of rooms per day (i.e there's a kitchen day, a bedroom day, a 'hall, stairs and landing' day etc). Then do one bathroom item per day on top. There is more to it but thats the basics. I don't know why it works better, but it does.

I would always recommend a cleaner if both working full time.

I was actually wondering what the hell counts as "a deep clean" to most people. My ex h had his own cleaning company, I worked for a time for a big cleaning company as a second/third/ fourth job. He cleaned places where he had to wear specialist suits so as not to produce static electricity. I had 4 DKs,big garden,lots of animals. I never let things get messy,or out of hand. Growing up,my late father had ideas, nothing was allowed to be touched, house was a mess,no friends allowed in. 2 border collies, under bed and sofas done weekly. Got rid of most of the carpets. I get out of the shower, clean the bath,basin, shower, worktops, weekly remove plants from window sill,water feed them, woodwork weekly, I never let it pile up.

What's the point of this, what are you actually asking? Or are you just wanting a pat on the back?

I deep clean about twice a year - decluttering, cleaning out cupboards, pulling furniture out, bleaching the shower tile grout, hand scrubbing floors etc. I don't always get it all done both times. In the spring/summer I also tend to paint or touch up paint and skirting boards. Just the thought of spending more time on cleaning than I do weekly already bores me.