If you work school hours, when do you clean? What am I doing wrong?!

[CautiousOptimist]

Recently started a job which means everyone leaving the house before 7:30, breakfast clubs and working until school pick up time.
It works fine. I empty the dishwasher and throw a load of laundry in the machine before we leave in the morning. I dry and sort the washing and cook from scratch in the early evening somehow alongside clubs and homework. Wash up later or DH does (often out at work until 8pm).
If you have a similar work pattern, when do you clean? Do you do it in the evening? 5 in the morning? At the weekend? While you're cooking and trying to look after children? Or not at all?! A quick vacuum I can manage but when do you clean the microwave, the windows, deep clean the bathrooms etc? What am I missing?

I try to clean as I go, the kids do the dishwasher after the get home from school, I clean up the kitchen as I cook dinner, I always clear the kitchen and dining table before I go to bed and stick the dishwasher on overnight. I stick a wash load on in the morning and fold dry washing and hang out wet in the evening, leave overnight to dry. I blitz particularly bad areas as I see them - eg polish oven doors while dinner's cooking, polish mirrors or wipe down sinks when I brush my teeth, clean toilets as I find them dirty or all in one go if I have time or inclination. I tend to help the kids sort their bedrooms and playroom on Saturday mornings plus the living room or bathrooms plus more washing. We have a robot vac which I can set off when floors look messy. The house is noticeably tidier when I am on leave from work though.

I do a run round one evening a week, Thursday, with everyone mucking in. Dust, hoover, clean bathrooms, mop floors - about 2 hrs and an easy tea like pizza. Daily wipe down kitchen and kitchen sink. Weekend bed change.

Deeper cleans are done on a weekend, bank holiday or a day off. Thats things like wiping out kitchen cupboards, pulling out washing machine and cleaning behind, cleaning the fridge properly, defrosting the freezer. Sometimes its very early on a weekend morning in the summer then chill for the rest of the day. Usually set aside a day after Christmas for a good go through.

Pay for the oven to be cleaned.

After school, in the evenings and on the weekends. Might do a bit of tidying after school before dinner including putting washing on. Dh loads dishwasher and cleans up kitchen from dinner while I’m doing bedtime. Anything big or DIY/gardening tends to happen on the weekends. We aren’t super tidy, but we also aren’t people who pack our days full of running around and a million activities, so we have plenty of downtime to get things done.

You talk of breakfast club, so I'm guessing your kids are younger than mine, but:
DH puts washing on during the day (he wfh).
Kids unload and reload the dishwasher after their breakfast (and after I've left for the day).
Kitchen gets cleared, dishwasher set off, excess hand washed, and sides wipe in an evening (like as soon as I get off my bum and mumsnet!)
Bathrooms, vacuuming, light dusting, sheets get done by all 4 of us in a Sunday morning blitz.
Microwave gets a wipe if we spill sonething in it.
Anything else waits til the school holidays...

Lower expectations.
Everyone pitches in.
Everyone tidies up as they go along.
Saturday morning "happy hour". Blast music, everyone picks jobs off a list and there's coffee/hot chocolate and pasties when the hour is up and everything is crossed off.
Easy tidying up solutions, e.g. wicker basket by the door for woolly hats and scarves.
Robot vacuum cleaner is a game changer. I love mine more than life itself.

Microwave: if I spill something, I wipe it straight away.

Bathrooms: H does most weekends

Windows: window cleaner outside; inside H does but only once a year on the first sunny day of Spring when he walks into the living room and spots the state of them.

On a wider level, I do more cleaning up little bits as I go along and he does the big jobs.

Morning, evening and weekend. I work office hours.

Weekend. It's a shared task.

Get a cleaner, if you can.
Otherwise just do less - windows pretty much never need cleaning!
Or one hour on a Saturday morning - everyone pitches in and does their bit.
And I have no idea what a "deep clean" is.
Living life is far more important than an immaculate house, and there are some cleaning obsessives on this site - you don't have to be like them!

Really see if your budget will stretch to a cleaner. It cost less than I feared and has made a massive difference to my quality of life: the house is generally clean and I’m never stressed about impending cleaning or rushing around trying to do it.

I put a load on in the morning and wash breakfast pots. Put anything at bottom of stairs that need to go up. Quick sweep round.

After work - cook tea - I do double portion so I only cook two days . Dh cooks Friday as he finishes early. Wash tea pots. Empty washing machine and hang to dry.

One day I dust downstairs, one day dust upstairs . One day clean bathroom. One day wipe down kitchen doors .

Dh hoovers and mops once a week, tidys garden and does bedding (usually at the weekend)
At the weekend I put my clothes away (everyone does their own) and do any one off cleaning jobs

I do most housework and meal prep at night, after the dcs are in bed. I've always done things then so I csn be around for the dcs during the day (to take to clubs or help with homework) and keep weekends for leisure. I've never needed much sleep and prefer doing it when nobody else is around to get in the way, so it works for me.

I don't, really. Our house is filthy, by Mumsnet standards anyway. Don't even get me started on my car.

I used to do what you do for laundry and tidying the kitchen, cooking dinner etc. I'd clean the bathroom while supervising DC in the bath - clean loo and basin, polish mirrors and taps, wipe down surfaces, change towels etc. Then just give th ebath a quick clean as they were drying off. We'd have a toy tidy up each evening before their bath and then after dinner I'd do a quick hoover and plump up cushions etc so the living space felt reclaimed for grown ups to relax in the evenings.

Once a week on Saturday mornings I'd do the main change the bedding, hoover the stairs, empty the bins, mop, dust and polish.

I’d end up cleaning before the cleaner came. Too much pride.🤦🏼‍♀️

I don’t have the energy! I can barely keep on top of what’s needed to be done daily.

I do things like bathrooms every other weekend. Dishwasher loaded and unloaded once a day, laundry usually once a day (have almost nightly bedwetting so it's needed), iron once a week.

Other stuff far less often.

How deep cleaning are we talking?
We have 4 DC
I'm home by 4 or 4.30 so from 4-5 I put away clean dishes from previous night, do te breakfast and lunch dishes from that day (no dishwasher) and sort school bags etc.

Straight after tea DH does bath time while I run round clearing the table, doing dishes from dinner, hoover all downstairs, put a load of washing on and put away a clean load. DH gets DC clothes out for the next day and takes the bin out most nights.

When DC in bed I hang up the load of washing that I washed earlier, put anything from the previous night that's still damp into the tumble dryer to be put away th following evening.

I clean the bathroom a bit each night before my shower so one night toilet next night floor etc so it all stays clean.

Upstairs hoovering and bed changing done on a weekend. We have a window cleaner and a gardener . All school and work uniform is washed, dried and put away at a weekend so the weekday washing is just things like pyjamas and weekend or after school club clothes.

Another person here who's not sure what deep cleaning is. Cleaning in our house happens as and when we can fit it in. DH does laundry while working from home. We have a robot vaccuum set to go downstairs every day on a timer which means we have to make sure the floor is clear. Bedrooms are generally a mess and get tidied/vacuumed when DH hassles the kids at weekends. Bathrooms we have a rota, the kids are supposed to do it at the weekend but DH and I end up doing some too and some weekends if we're busy it doesn't happen so I tend to just wipe the sink when using it and clean the shower when I'm in it. Compared with some mumsnetters we live in relative filth but we're never ill so I reckon the germs do us good.

I don't clean other than the kitchen and table etc daily and cleaning up any spills. I have a cleaner for 2 hr a week who does the floors and a good clean of the bathroom and kitchen. I didn't want to give up the precious hour of decompression time before bed so I think of it as chosing between paying the cleaner or working 2 hour less myself (and even though I don't like my job much at the moment its preferable to 2 hours cleaning!)

I've just let standards drop massively but I do find that everyone being out all day means there's a bit less cleaning and tidying to do than when they were preschool and at home some days.
My kids are 3 and 2 and I used to clean while they were asleep or out, but now I just do it with them there. So a Saturday morning one of us might whip the hoover round. It takes an ages because the kids like to help/ride on the back/find tiny crumbs they can put up the 'shoot'. It's not a thorough job but better than nothing!
Bathrooms, I just whack some toilet cleaner down sometimes before work, give it scrub next time I go for a wee! Same with sinks, give it a quick clean while in the bathroom.
Laundry, probably put on a load a day and bought a dryer which was the best investment ever! Putting away happens on the weekend with the kids again, or sometimes I'll do a bit of sorting watching TV. I intro a clean basket in everyone's bedroom so at least it's tidy and it the right room even if not put away, sometimes I just get the kids clothes straight out of it.
Dishwasher and keeping kitchen clean just gets down after eating, we do it between us and are teaching the kids to put their plates in etc. I sweep the kitchen several times a day as I only get the hoover out once a week.
Dusting etc is very rare at this point in my life, but always gets done before something big like Christmas or a birthday party or people staying so that's fine for me!

I do have a Monday off so that helps me catch up.

The other 4 week days I'm back home with the kids for 3.10pm. Mostly I do stuff then and start dinner about 5.30pm. Although I do have 2 of the 4 days to take them to clubs and pick up again. I also wfh mostly so can put the dishwasher on or load a wash etc.

Also homework to squeeze in during that time at home so it's mainly sorting out some washing/putting it away. Hoovering and maybe some dusting. Sometimes manage to clean one of the bathrooms but not always. Tidying things away is a forever battle never mind the cleaning 😭

After dinner then morning and evening at the weekends. A little bit everyday. Big jobs in the holidays.

How dirty can it get if you're out all day anyway ?

Wednesday mid - week depending on age of kids, we all did one hour together. No one was excused unless sick. Power hour altogether works well. Other bits first thing Sat morning.