Clean house - EVERY weekend?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Do you feel it’s necessary to clean your house/apartment/room EVERY weekend, from top to bottom?

My feeling on this is: A Clean House Is A Sign Of A Wasted Life.

Yes, I can understand straightening up, cleaning the sinks and toilet every few days, vacumming once a week, and doing laundry about as often; but cleaning the entire area from top to bottom seems a bit…excessive.

I’m not a slob by any means. I’m just saying that there are more important things to be done, like getting out and enjoying life.

2

Absolutely not. Like you, I hardly live in filth - I make a very strong effort to wash dishes after every meal or at least every night and wipe down the counters, plus perform regular maintenance cleaning on my house as needed - but I rarely scrub the house top to bottom unless my mom’s coming over.

I don’t think a clean house is necessarily a sign of a wasted life - some people just can’t stand clutter. But it’s not that important to me.

3

If you never let it go to pot, there’s no reason that it should take more than a couple of hours to clean your house (weekend, or whenever). If you don’t touch anything until the weekend, yeah, it’s going to take longer.

I can’t sit around in a mess, so if it’s messy, I clean it. I can handle a little bit of mess (books, magazine pileup), but I can’t have filth (dirty dishes, floors, toilets). I don’t consider it a waste of time to keep things clean. If it wasn’t clean I’d just sit around thinking about how I should clean it, and that is a waste of time.

4

I’m pretty relaxed with my cleaning schedule. I have some stuff to do today, but if I blow it off, I blow it off. I’ll get to it eventually. I keep up with the kitchen and laundry, and the rest of it sort of waits until I’m inspired. Roughly every couple weeks.

5

Ditto. Just put things back in their place, keep the dishes washed and the trash thrown out. On the weekend, it doesn’t take me more than a couple of hours to clean, and what I’m mainly doing is picking everything up and then vacuuming because my hair is everywhere.

6

My philosophy:

7

What the ladies above said - if you do your dishes when you’re done eating, throw trash away instead of leaving it on the table, and put things away after you’re done using them, things never get so dirty that it takes more than 5-10 minutes to give each room a quick once-over and vacuuming. Which is more than worth it for the basic quality of life increase.

8

My place is in a constant state of controlled mess.

I do clean up the dishes after use, keep the trash emptied, keep the toilet bowls and showers from getting gross with the shower spray and 10,000 flushes things, and wipe up any spills. However, I never vaccuum or do real cleaning unless someone is coming over.

It doesn’t take that long because it’s just dusting, sweeping, vaccuuming, and wiping. But, if you come over unexpectedly, be prepared for some mess!

9

I’m a clutter-hound. I live in a world where I am battling it, or recovering from losing a battle. I am currently doing the flylady thing, which has helped tremendously. She breaks cleaning up in to little bits, 15 min. increments, and my lazy butt even falls behind on that.

That said, it seems I can not clean the floor enough. I sweep it at least twice a day. The fact that my 7month old is threatening to become self-mobile, is definitely fueling my desire to get the house in order.

My mother was a tad obsessive and would spend saturdays rounding up the troops to scrub the house. Yeah, I would have rather done pretty near anything else. Now I consider hiring someone to come over and be neurotically clean so I can get a decent nap.

10

I have to do so.

I have a housekeeper who comes in every Monday morning. (I have a back injury and she does the vaccuuming, scrubbing and mopping I can’t do.) I’m embarassed to bring her into a messy house, so every weekend, I have to clean to an above-shame level.

Really, it’s been helpful for me-- I keep a cleaner house than I used to do.

11

And you know I wouldn’t vaccum either. But then you have 2-foot long curly hairs everywhere, wrapped around things. Drop something? About half the time when you pick it up there will be a hair wrapped around it. Will accumulate here and there.

I think dusting is stupid and don’t do it except in two cases. Well, three:

Family is coming over.
The dust is so bad it shows.
The sun is hitting the TV screen or whatever just so and I get appalled by how much dust there is.

Real cleaning? What’s that? Does that count wiping down the counter with a wet cloth? :stuck_out_tongue:

12

I usually do, but I don’t have much house to keep (<800sqft). Except washing the windows. I almost never get around to washing the windows.

Not doing it this weekend though as I am nursing a broken hand and it’s finals time for The Highwayman. In two weeks everything will be back to normal and I can spank this house’s ass back into shape.

13

My wife works out-of-town during the week and comes home on Friday evenings or Saturday mornings. Now through the week, the place gets messy and I tend to start cleaning a couple of hours before the wife gets here.

Sometimes, she will tell me she is coming home Friday and I start frantically cleaning, only for her to tell me she changed her mind and will be here on Saturday.

14

Most weekends we try to:
dust the furniture
sweep the floors
empty the wastebaskets
vacuum the rugs
wash/mop the tile/linoleum foors
clean the bathrooms.
Probably takes less than 2 total manhours.
If we do a really superficial job one weekend, we might try to do a more thorough cleaning the next.

Anything else, vacuuming furniture/air ducts, washing wood floors, dusting ceilings/ceiling fans, washing windows, etc., is far more sporadic, each occurring a couple of times a year when we think of it/have time.

We try to keep things pretty picked up throughout the week. With 5 people, it can get pretty chaotic if everyone just drops things wherever. We’ve tried to make it easy to have places to put things, plenty of coat hooks, closet organizers, etc.

15

We’ve been conned. It happens a lot in modern life. Somebody wasn’t making enough money selling soap, brooms, and vacuum cleaners, so they hired ad agencies to convince us that we were shamefully dirty. Your great-grandma didn’t have today’s level of cleaning, unless she had servants.

16

We really only clean when parents are visiting, or if we have allergic friends headed our way, then we’ll vacuum/spray allergen reducers.

The dog sheds for three months every six months, so vacumming is pretty much useless most of the year.

17

I spot clean throughout the week and do the following on the weekends:

Bathrooms
Remove and wash rugs, clean shower walls, clean toilet thoroughly (I use a toothbrush), clean mirror, wipe down walls, remove items from sinks tops and wipe them down, sweep and mop floors

Kitchen and dining rooms
Remove items from and clean counters, wipe down cabinet doors, wipe down window sills, clean range hood, remove items from back of stove and burners and wipe down stove, scrub sink, remove rugs and clean floor, wipe down tables, chairs.

Babies’ rooms
Wipe down cribs, dressers, walls, and doors, put toys and clothes away, wipe down window sills, change/wash bedding, vacuum.

Mommy and daddy’s room
Take clothes to be cleaned down stairs, hang up rest of clothes, pick up laundry that might not have made it to the hamper, clean tv and various tv-related items, dust dressers, change/wash bedding, wipe down window sills, vacuum.

Den
Vaccum, dust tv and computer, file and/or throw away papers, wipe down window sills and door.

Living Room
Vacuum, clear any kid-related clutter, wipe down coffee and end tables, wipe down tv and tv-related items, wipe down window sills, straighten pillows on sofas and chairs.

Other
Vacuum steps, wipe down walls in stairwell, clean sliding glass door, clean entry way door (inside).

When focused and done properly, this stuff takes about three hours. No big deal at all.