Cleaning a 5 bed house

[Jayteedee]

Hi all - can I have your cleaning tips please? We recently moved to a really sizeable 5 bed 3 bath house, after being in a smaller flat for years. Short question - how do you manage cleaning in a house that takes all day to clean? Like do people do X cleaning jobs on a Wednesday for instance to avoid spending the whole of every day one weekend cleaning? Anyone have any good tips?! (I have two small kids too...)

Do you need to use all three bathrooms? I'd keep it to two if possible to cut down the cleaning.

When we had a house I focused on kitchen, bathrooms and hoovering. Common areas were hoovered every other day, mopped once a week. EVERYWHERE else, weekly. If it's clean underneath, toys and personal items all over don't matter as much.

Have a 4 bed detached house .Usually do downstairs hoovering a couple of times P/W and tidying .Kitchen .mop floor once a week (sweep in between)Washing about 5 /6 times P/W Bathroom quick once over a couple of times .Dusting /polishing 3/4 times (just enjoy polishing!Sad or what LOL)

When hoovering I do 2 floors at a time.
Bathrooms weekly plus a wipe if I see gunge. Cleaning stuff always in the bathroom. Kitchen sides every day and floor swept daily. Kids bedrooms don't get done that often. A bit of dirt builds the immune system 😉

Take a look at the organised mum or fly lady methods

I have a six bed house, work full time, have two kids and no cleaner. My rules are:
Shoes off in the house. Kids have to tidy up. No eating anywhere other than the kitchen table. If you use a plate/glass etc put it in the dishwasher after use. I call kids before bath time to put all their stuff away. One room is their playroom they are responsible for that and have to tidy it every weekend, and then I inspect and they vacuum. In the week it is usually a tip.
Keep the kids outside as much as possible, trampoline and hula hoops, footballs all encourage this. Get good door mats at all entry points and teach them how to use them.

Also I'm blike a scratched record and tell them "A place for everything and everything in it's place."

I've also told them to rinse the basin after use and replace the loo paper if it runs out.

I clean the kitchen regularly and make sure it is immaculate after supper every day, otherwise I'm quite lax and vacuum and dust the whole house once a week from top to bottom, apart from the playroom.

My DC are quite good now but my husband is another matter.

TOM method,
robot vacuum,
make sure everything has a place to make it easier to clean,
get everyone in the house on board.

Every evening the kitchen is cleaned, dishwasher on all the chairs etc get put on the tables like we did at school and the robot vacuum goes on. Then in the morning all the hard floors downstairs get a quick mop with a spray mop.

On the upside, there is far less dust in a big house. I lost my cleaner due to Covid but have found that I can easily get away with dusting only every 3 weeks.

We lived in flats for long time before moving to a house understand the difference our house is not as big as yours but it does feel like it takes much on longer to clean. What we do is have a cleaning evening one day during the week we've done that even when we lived in a flat. It's really important for me not to spend the weekend cleaning. So we do a Blitz on a Wednesday or Thursday. I found it amazing what you can fit in into a 3 hours would feel like I took up the whole day on a Saturday. Other than that we tend to put things away as we use them and keep it tidy I don't have children so much easier than when you have children. At the moment we also do a whiz round normally on a Sunday morning just to hoover and give things a quick wipe down

Our house is old and dusty too. So think I could do less if this wasn't the case!

Saturday morning for 1-2 hours, with everyone mucking in: one person hoovers, one mops, dusts and polishes, one strips beds, remakes them, changes the towels and sticks a washload on, one empties bins and hangs up coats, bags, tosses out papers etc. That's if you have 5 people for the five beds. If not, clean the spare rooms and then close them off until you have guests. or if they double up as an office or playroom, do a 5 minute whizz around at the end of each day, putting toys or files back and wiping down surfaces.

Then do the kitchen every day for 15 mins and one other room each day for 15 mins, so over the course of a fortnight, every room has had a hoover, dust, polish, declutter.

Try mrs hinch method, write a list of daily,weekly monthly jobs and tick them off. I’ve only got a small house but the jobs list helps me .

I have the same sized house and really struggled as don’t have a cleaner (if you can afford it then get one!) before lockdown I was doing The Organised Mum method, you have to do it religiously-don’t skip the Fridays or the daily level 1 tasks but after doing that for a while I really felt on top of the housework for the first time ever (I’m not a naturally tidy person), in particular the 5 min wipe over the bathrooms every day made a big difference and does a daily hoover of the downstairs hall/kitchen. Break up the 30 mins into 10 or 15 min chunks if your kids are little and you can’t fit it all in one go.

I was talking about this yesterday. We have a 5 bedroom house plus 3 downstairs living areas, laundry room, 2 kitchens and 2 bathrooms. It's impossible to keep it clean on my own. It took me three hours yesterday to do just the upstairs windows and blinds. My neighbours have cleaners and outsource the ironing. I conclude that most people who can afford a big house can afford help. Having said that, I have had cleaners in the past but they don't seem to want to do anything more than flipping a duster about.

I'm very interested in the robot vacuum... Which one is best?

I have a 6 bed, 3 bathroom house. We don't have a cleaner at the moment and do one clean on a Saturday morning - the whole house, including bedding. I have teenagers and we divide up the house. Keep the kitchen clean each day, and swish round the bathrooms probably twice a week in between while brushing teeth or something.

It does get very dusty in between - and I'm adding hoovering and mopping (we have wooden floors throughout) to the rota for Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Need to explore TOM method. In normal times I have a cleaner who comes twice a week.

There are various methods available, but they basically all have the same components.

Daily jobs
Regular jobs (every week, every 3rd day, every other day, etc.)
Less frequent deep cleans on one area at a time

Something like TOMM can be helpful to start with but you will find your own pattern.

My biggest advice is, though, to limit the number of rooms you actually use if you don't need that many in regular use. Shut off a guest room or guest bathroom, tidy and made up and clean, so you can just give it a dust and hoover if somebody does need to use it. Limit the areas that regularly need cleaning.

5 bed and 3 floors. Not huge but 3 floors gets a pain. I have 2 hooves to make it easier. I wipe all 3 bathrooms daily to keep on top of it. I hoover downstairs every day and upstairs every other day. Kitchen I do daily.

@AnnaNimmity
I have a Eufy. I was all set to buy a cordless vacuum and saw that the Eufy cost £100 less so I took a punt.
I'm so pleased I did, it's great for keeping on top of the floors. It encourages tidiness as it can't get round or gets stuck on things if it's messy. It's brilliant for getting under furniture and beds.
I just wish it could do stairs!
I tend just do a big vacuum with the Miele once a week as opposed to the daily vac I used to do.

One tip that has really helped us - buy a robot vacuum. Then every morning before you go downstairs, tidy the floors of toys and set it going. Whole floor hoovered while we're eating breakfast downstairs :) and in the evening tidy toys on ground floor and set it off again.

I did the same as @Romainecalm when I had 5 bedrooms. It's important for your sanity that everyone chips in. I used to say to the kids, we can all do half an hour or you can have fun, and I'll work alone on it all morning-which is fair?

Thankyou @Notso i'm tempted to get several and set them off around the house...

Like @onlinelinda my children all help with the cleaning - there's been no moaning about it, and they're all relatively cheerful. It means the house can be cleaned top to bottom in a couple of hours. I'm seriously thinking that we can save that money when lock down is over (we're still paying the cleaner at the moment although she's not coming) and do it ourselves. we also share the jobs during the week too. i realise this probably doesn't help the OP as her children are young I think. But my just 8 year old is also part of the rota in my house.

Resign yourself to cleaning all the time. I have.

Tomm doesn't work for me. It takes me a lot longer than 30 minutes to clean my kitchen...perhaps I'm slow.

I use an app which tells me what I have to do each day called Spotless.

I have 4 bathrooms / 4 beds .. and a office : bedroom .. my top tip is to have cleaning stuff in each bathroom so you don't need to go up and down the stairs all the time .. I keep clean cleaning cloths in there too so when the moment takes me I can clean one at any time .. do a bedroom / bathroom a day or every other day to keep on top of it but def all cleaned once a week . I hoover with the dyson downstairs every day and everywhere else every 2/3 days . Change beds once a week in rotation.

Guys thank you all for your helpful and enthusiastic advice. It's making me feel more on top of it already

I have a cleaner once a fortnight (four bed house with large extension downstairs). Honestly that is the biggest factor for me... her help!

As others have said, cleaner isn't coming during lockdown so I'm concentrating on the main areas we use. I make sure the kitchen is tidy and clean before bed every night. I hoover the living room every few days and keep it totally clutter free. Quick wipe of the main bathroom every so often. Ignore bedrooms etc! Other than making beds!!

Absolutely clutter free is the way to go. Makes keeping on top of it much easier.

No cleaner here but 3 beds m bathroom + cloakroom.
DH , 2 adult DC

Hoover upstairs+ downstairs.
I am coveting a new one ( cordless stick vacuum, I really really want a Halo Capsual )

We have 4 laundry baskets : black/white/light colour/dark colour .
Everyone (on pain of certain death) has to put their clothes in inside-out except socks .
I put small things, bras, delicates and anything that willl tangle like leggings into laundry bags .
Peg up on those little peg hangers.

I have a hanging rail over the bannister to hang clothes that have part dried

Basket in the hall for recyclables from the bathroom and bedrooms.

Loo cleaner at night
Drop of bleach in the sinkful of water at night .

Have a Utility/Laundry Room -keep it all out the way

And a Pantry . Mine is in the hall so half my shopping doesn't have to get dragged into the kitchen .

Convince yourself (daily) that having two lovely cats outweighs the daily hoovering . (They do they are lovely but so so moulty )