Clean a house to a good standard in just two hours

[Shittyhouse]

Seen so many posts about cleaners, with a lot of people talking about two-hour cleans. I’m just wondering what I’m doing incorrectly, because two hours is not enough to clean my house. How can you clean a house to a good standard in just two hours?

Honestly they are really good! If you’re someone who struggles to stay on task (someone with ADHD is a good example) then they are super good at keeping you focused on what you need to be doing. When you aren’t given any leeway to faff around and are being (gently) bossed around by someone, you can get a lot done in a short space of time! I used to use them a lot before we got a cleaner.

I can get the basics done in 2 hours - hoovering, cleaning toilet/bathrooms and mop floors. And wiping any dirty surfaces.

Often they charge more at first for a deep clean then keep on top of it. Obviously depends on size of house and number of bathrooms. I pay 3 hours for a 4 bed.

You're cleaning standards are waaay too high!

What is a clean with a bucket of water and bleach? Never done that in my life.

Firstly, cleaners just clean IME. I always ensure it is tidy and clutter free before they come, which you would have to add to your time tidying if you DIY.

Secondly, I think it is common to have cleaners in for a bit longer than 2 hours unless deliberately being mindful of budget. We have equivalent of 4 hours (2 x 2 hours) and I think our cleaners do that as minimum for their clients. I know they go to one house pretty much daily but that includes folding washing etc.

I will still blitz areas for a deep clean as and when I feel it needs it, or ask them to come a couple extra hours if they are free.

Unless you are an absolute minimalist, if you have a 4 bed, with a couple reception rooms, or pets/kids then I think you'd just have to do a bit more than 2 hours.

Ha sorry I meant in the 2 hours from the OP not my mad 8 (which involves almost a deep clean - rare occasion I get to clean that much nowadays).

Yup, me too. It's my day off tomorrow & if I'm at it with no distractions (pod cast on & locked in) I can clean our 4 bed with 2 reception & 2 bathroom house in 2 hours no issues:

Dust
Hoover
Clean bathrooms
Clean kitchen
Mop
Wipe light switches/ doors

Alternate weeks I'll wipe skirting & do fridge/window surrounds.

DP does windows.

Laundry is separate, of course!

But our house is tidy as we're both tidy & I have tidy(?ish) teens.

I used to be a cleaner. Did not tidy up. Wiped ornaments and other things but in bedrooms wiped everything around but left wiped stuff on the beds. I never used bleach. It does more harm than good. Disinfectant is better or at a push antibac.

It depends on the size and how clean it is to begin with surely?

I can do a quick blitz in 2 hours

yiu agree that you can clean a bathroom in around the minutes up thread

so half an hour if you have 3 bathrooms ( more than many people) , 15 mins to walk round with the duster and another 15 with the vacuum and half an hour in the kitchen gives you half an hour do something deeper in one or two rooms

A weekly clean of a 2 bed house would be bathrooms, assuming 2, kitchen light clean and all floors, including mopping. No dusting or windows. 🙂 They are my favourite ones. Just crack on with them.

Easy . If you do general cleaning ie bathrooms and kitchen / stove tops etc daily as we do and a quick whizz round with the vac daily two hours is more than enough to do a more thorough clean obviously not changing three double beds and Venetian blind cleaning etc but defo skirting boards light fittings mopping etc

It depends on the size of the house. Ours is 3500 sq feet. It takes my cleaner four hours to: steam hard floors, vacuum carpets, clean three bathrooms and two bogs, dust. I couldn't do it that fast.

I deep clean a room a week - paintwork, vacuum soft furnishings, pull things out and tidy, picture tops and polish glass, dust light fittings, etc, tidy drawers, wash/polish ornaments. It takes me 12 to 14 weeks to get round.

Why on earth do you need to vacuum your entore house daily?

You clean toilets and bathrooms and vacuum daily?

A cleaner doing everything in two hours will be more efficient than someone doing a room a day. He or she will only get the hoover out once, for example, or perhaps it will even be left out.

My cleaner does our modest 3 bed semi in 2 hours, usually less. It's always sparkling when she's been.

It's tidy to begin with so that makes her job much easier.

Hoovering, dusting, windows, bathroom, kitchen surfaces and mopping kitchen floor.

We have a bathroom with bath and shower, a shower room (with WC) and a downstairs loo. It takes me 1.5 hours in total to clean them all each week. That includes cleaning mirrors, tiled walls and windows but doesn't include vacuuming or washing the floors. I cannot see how anyone can clean a whole house in 2 hours, or even clean three bathrooms/loos and the kitchen! And our house is pretty tidy.

If it’s clean to start with then fairly easily

How does it take 1.5 hours?

Say 5 mins per toilet. 10 for each bath or shower, 5 for each sink and 5 per window/mirror. There's plenty of time to sort out the floor in 1.5 hours then.

I'm a slattern because I wouldn't clean tiled walls weekly. You don't clean normal walls that often (if ever!).

We are renting a large 4 bedroom house. I can clean it in 2 hours as could my cleaner. That's just a basic clean, though.

I clean weekly. Don't have time to do it daily. Doesn't need it, either, in my opinion. A thorough clean would be once in a blue moon for me!

Depends on the house and what you mean by 'clean'! I can get my (3-bed, but 2 bedrooms used as offices) house what I'd consider basic day-to-day clean in 2 hours easily unless it was filthy for some reason. I can't do what I'd call a deep clean* in that time - that could take as long as you would let me take because there's always something else to add to the list.

*Everywhere hoovered and dusted, swept and mopped, everything tidy, mirrors and internal glass cleaned, door handles and banisters wiped, sinks disinfected, bedding changed, in the bathroom everything wiped down, shower screen scrubbed, tiles in shower cleaned, toilet scrubbed.

**All the finicky bits: inside the window casements and external doorframes, every skirting board wiped down, fridge entirely cleaned out and wiped down, inside all the cupboards wiped down inside, hoovering underneath the sofa/big furniture moved, all the books on high shelves dusted, every radiator wiped down, dust off the top of door frames, fabric cleaning machine on the high traffic bits of carpet, front door washed down, dishwasher and washing machine cleaning solutions run and filters emptied, sofa cushion covers washed, big oven clean, etc.

Maybe I'm a grubby bitch and some of you are cleaning inside your window casements weekly (I've certainly seen some cleaning Tiktoks where they are!) but when I say I'm cleaning the house normally I mean the former.

I don't have a cleaner any more but my cleaner used to do the former (minus beds being changed) every week and then pick one room to really deep clean as well. That took her 2 hours, but she was a pro and faster than me. House always felt sparkling....I miss her.

1. depends on the size of the house - mine is a mid-sized Victorian terrace
2. depends on how dirty it gets. We are an older couple with no pets and we (and our visitors) take shoes off at the front door. We don’t want around with food. We wipe down and tidy as we go along
3. it depends how clean you want it to be. I’m happy with: wipe down the kitchen, clean the bathrooms and downstairs loo. Hoover throughout. Mop hard floors. Wipe over furniture surfaces with a microfibre cloth and spray. I don’t need my cleaner to do skirting boards, on top of the kitchen units etc etc. They’re things that get done a few times a year on this house. My window cleaner does inside and out.

My cleaner comes once a fortnight for 2.5 hours. This is enough cleaning (and intrusion and expense) for me.

Our 4 bed house takes our cleaner 2.5 hours per week.

But our house is very tidy - everything is put away so surfaces are basically clear. And I clean the kitchen, toilets and sinks every day so there’s not a lot of scrubbing to do.

So our (very good) cleaner is able to focus on dusting, polishing, steam cleaning the floors and showers, cleaning inside windows and vacuuming.

She doesn’t do our beds, ironing or bins or loos (as she has ironically got a bit of a thing about toilets!) but she gets round everything else.