The need to clean the house from top to bottom before xmas!

[BoozyBoots]

Does anyone else experience this?

I've even cleaned the oven & defrosted freezer!
I know at some point on xmas eve i'll be annoying the family with the hoover, putting clean sheets on beds etc, all for the house to be covered in food,wrapping paper, pine needles and god knows how many spilt drinks the next day.

I don't know about skirting boards....... mine only get cleaned before I redecorate. I do like a clean kitchen and bathroom , but you could write your name in the dust on some of my living room shelves.

we do this along with decorating and painting full house every year so it's fresh for Christmas.

Decorate the whole house once a year! My goodness I decorate one room a year so it can me many years before I get around to it again. It's 10 years since I did the hallway.
My OH doesn't decorate, it's only me, and with working nearly full time and caring for my kids and disabled mother there simply isn't the time to decorate.

i am obviously a complete skankhound and should leave this thread....

I cleaned the oven on a whim on Monday. I was half way through and wondered why I was doing it!
I had a new hob fitted this morning.

The lounge, dining room and my bedroom are always clean and tidy.
I clean the kitchen most days, the fridge is done every Friday.

DS1 has hoovered through today.
The bathrooms will be done tomorrow, and get wiped over daily.
The boys will do their rooms over the weekend.

I have said that all the Christmas decorations will go up when the house is clean.... They aren't up yet

I am rubbish at keeping up with the cleaning, that's why I need a Magic Elf jellyjuggling.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/the-cleaning-elf/

I much prefer making things and drawing. I don't actually like dirt but it's just never very interesting.

I hoovered my skirting boards and got the nozzle out for the nooks & crannies. Does that count? Am hoping it's not too sunny when my mum visits though, so she can't see the rushed job I did, cleaning the windows. All streaky! slinks away with head hung low

Dh's boring friends have invited us to dinner Monday night.
I have work all day mon and he doesn't
I am going to tell him that I will only go to boring friends if the house is clean and tidy and the wrapping finished.

I hafve to do this too I thought I was the only one!

We have christmas party here on Sunday which is great because it means I HAVE to do it Saturday then I can relax for the rest of the week (after putting out the recyling of copious wine bottles)

Also have a friend coming to stay tonight so the spare room is done already.

YAY for christmas.

Oh this thread has cheered me up no end. Every year I say I won't do it but every year I spend the run up to Christmas going nuts. I clean the house regularly anyway, hoover daily, bathroom and kitchen is well scrubbed 3 times a week, upstairs blitzed at a weekend but Christmas, oh blimey, I can't help myself. I wash everything including walls and ceilings and skirting boards. I scrub and polish behind the wood burner. Tops of cupboards, inside cupboards, the loft. Everything. It's a bloody sickness. It feels soooooo good when it's done though.

I wonder if it was because I was always told as a child that father christmas wouldn't come unless my room was tidy.
now I have more than my room it has widened to the need to do the whole house??

Interesting. I grew up in Scotland where the whole house had to be cleaned for New Year- it was a superstition that if you entered the New Year with a dirty house it waould stay that way all year.
New Year of course was important in Scotland because Christmas was banned for 400 years.

Is it only women that have these urges?

DH is actually more of a domestic goddess than I am, but that's not saying much!

I'm a slattern, but I always insist on spotless house by Christmas Eve & when we go on holidays.

Thank goodness it is not just me. I am also a slattern most of the year but I want everything to be 'perfect' for Christmas. It is daft because it really doesn't make any difference but I suppose I don't feel like I can really relax if I keep thinking I should have cleaned x, y and z. It would feel like a normal day!! Once a year it is nice to have a day when I am not confronted by slatternliness (is that a word?!)

Did the fridge on Tuesday. I never do the fridge. We have just got a new TV unit for the dining room (to house a PS4 that father Christmas may or may not be bringing) and the amount of dust and cobwebs behind the old table we had in there. - it feels good to know it is gone though.

I think it was drilled into me from birth really. My mother did exactly the same even though we never had visitors (we lived too far away from family).

I don't think men do get it really except that DH expects it because his mother is and was the same. He doesn't know why it is happens but he knows it is going to happen.

God it's pathetic isn't it? I'm being a right arsey cow about getting the house sorted!
I've given up tonight and stated on the festive booze and chocs so actually couldn't give a shit right now

I've stayed up until 2am in the past trying to get the house tidy before Christmas. I'm working all the way through to Christmas Eve this year - I foresee a late night! DH thinks I'm totally mad, but I just can't imagine getting up on Christmas day to a messy house. Really pleased to see I'm not alone in this...

No I'm not lucky, I have three kiddies under 6, but I would go insane trying to keep everything orderly around them, so I relax a bit more these days - especially around Christmas. People come to see us not a clean house!

Wow. You people are scary. I have hoovered and put some clementines in a bowl.

19 people and four dogs here for Christmas Day. Ain't no point in cleaning first

Definitely, I start cleaning beginning December doing all the jobs that won't need doing again.
I start with cleaning paths, grids, tidying garden.
Then I start the carpets, we live in a larger than av house.
Next, I clean all the woodwork, including doors and windows.
This usually takes up to mid Dec, then I do the general cleaning and washing up to day before xmas eve.
I only do about an hour a day though.

My intention is that the house will be spotless by the end of Sunday.

Dh and the dc are at home on Monday whilst I'm at work. I suspect carnage by the time I return and the need of a large Baileys! I'll still do it though

Lottie but what about everyday grime?
I looked into my kitchen this morning, last night I was tired and loaded the dishwasher and that's it.
This morning I looked at yesterdays muck- I made a curry and pile of flatbreads yesterday, there are hardened bits of curry stuck to the worktop and cooker, flour, pieces of chopped onion and catfood on the floor, chickpeas stuck in the drain of the sink, washing up bowl is greasy and dirty.

Yesterday my kitchen was clean and tidy but I will have to tackle it again this morning before I can cook again, including the kitchen floor if I don't want food dragged through the whole house on the soles of people's feet.

Don't you have that kind of everyday cleaning? I don't think sweeping up food debris off the kitchen floor daily is the top.