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querying the hive mind
House cleaning routines
Do you have house cleaning routines (kitchen, bathroom, living spaces, bedrooms) that you practice habitually, almost without thinking? Dedicated days for certain tasks? Routines that you have found that you are able to stick to?
How did you get from "clean infrequently when it gets bad enough" to "clean more frequently so it never gets bad"?
posted by GernBlandston on May 07, 2024 at 6:42 AM
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Aw yeah this is my jam.
House situation up to this month, lived alone in a three bedroom home.
- Wash clothes Wednesday and weekend
- Groceries Thursday plus random one-offs
- Lawn care Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday (very small yard)
- Vacuum floors Friday
- Once a week: pick a bigger task (clean all the mirrors, inventory of house supplies, sort through unfiled papers, mop, etc.)
- Switch out sheets, towels, and other linens on Sunday
- Take out trash Sunday
- Daily: sweep kitchen, swap kitchen towels, handle dishes, shut down the kitchen (put everything away and prep for the next day)
House situation going forward, living in the same three bedroom with my partner full time and his two children part time:
- He usually does a grocery trip on Monday and I usually do one toward the end of the week or on the weekend.
- We do laundry on a rolling basis, but I usually get us fully caught on Wednesday and he does the same on weekends.
- We have a cleaner come every two weeks.
- I don't know if this counts, but on Sunday we have a sit-down where we sync up our schedules for the week in detail, including meal planning and groceries/other chores we need to coordinate, and look in less detail at the weeks ahead.
All of this comes with a caveat of I'm tidy. I put things away after using them and do a little house reset for 5 or 10 minutes every day - rounding up mugs and socks, repacking my gym bag, throwing papers where they need to be (my favorite place? The garbage!), etc. This really really helps; it makes it so that tidying and cleaning are separate activities, and it's much easier to clean when things are already tidy. If you only do one thing, I think "5 minutes of putting things closer to where they need to be" is the best place to start.
I recommend How to Keep House while Drowning, by KC Davis. It's written for people who for some reason or another don't have full capacity (schedule, chronic conditions, capitalism) and for me it was a great way to reset my expectations around my house.
posted by punchtothehead at 6:57 AM
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Like half the internet, I learned to clean from FlyLady. It's pretty intense in gender binaries and religiosity, but do I STILL do a 27-Fling Boogie on a regular basis? Yes, and I kind of assume that on my deathbed when all my other memories are gone I'll be muttering about needing to clean the sink.
So, I guess I recommend starting with her basic instructions, but then switch over to Unfuck Your Habitat for your ongoing tasks and mindset. Or just start from UYH.
But my number one principles:
- Never leave a room empty-handed, you've probably got SOMETHING in there that actually needs to go somewhere else.
- You can do a shitload of cleaning in 5 minutes, and you have lots of pretty poorly-used 5 minutes in your day, convert a few to cleaning.
- And you should see what 15 minutes can do!
- You probably have too much shit and it has nowhere to go, and while you likely can make more space by organizing and obtaining SOME additional really-useful storage (and there's a lot of storage options that don't do what you need, so think about it at some length), you also need to throw shit out. (Source: me. Everything we own fits in a Ford Transit 150 medium roof cargo van.)
posted by Lyn Never at 7:04 AM
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I'm not as advanced as the two above, but I've noticed I can pretty painlessly wash a few dishes while my food is in the microwave. Limited timeframe, less resistance.
posted by bluesky78987 at 7:20 AM
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My partner jokes that I'm always cleaning and it's a little true, but I'm also always doing something else. The cleaning just happens as I go. Caveats: I live alone 50% of the time at least and have no kids. I also rent, so yard maintenance/building maintenance isn't on me.
Morning: Empty the dishwasher while my coffee brews. Toss any stragglers from the night before into the empty dishwasher
Mid-morning: If I have laundry (I always have laundry, but I have to take things down to the laundromat so I don't always DO laundry), I will pop down and start a load or two. I work from home so I bring my laptop.
After work: bring back any dishes from the day; typically I don't bother loading them into the dishwasher because I'll be eating dinner before too long. Put away laundry.
Post gym: Eat dinner and then clean the kitchen. I don't cook much--mostly fixing salads, sandwiches, the occasional rice bowl. So the cleanup isn't arduous.
Post dinner: I get ready to shower. Two days a week this involves a deep conditioner mask that needs to sit on my hair ~20 min; while that is soaking, I will do one of the following, whatever seems like it needs most doing:
-Wipe down the bathroom surfaces and restock anything that is low
-Soak any hand-wash items in the sink and hang them to dry
-Make the bed (changing the sheets ~every week and a half or so, otherwise just neatening it up)
-Sweep and vacuum
-Dust
I have a loose schedule for bigger projects e.g., vacuuming and freshening up the sofas, cleaning the fridge, but mostly I'm just a person who is bothered by mess so those things happen as soon as they bother me.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:24 AM
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Yes, Sunday morning is vacuuming the whole house and Sunday evening is bathrooms and kitchen. Monday is trash truck day, so that's why I picked Sunday.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:24 AM
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If Flylady is a little too religious and heteronormative, there is always the Unfuck Your Habitat approach; their Unfuck your weekend plan is still how I handle my cleaning.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:27 AM
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It used to be that the house would only get cleaned when someone was coming over. I started a routine about 6 months ago and it is very satisfying. YMMV depending on the size of your house and whether you have kids, pets, etc. I'm in a 1,500SF house with no kids or (currently) pets.
Every Sunday, I do the following:
1. Change the sheets and pillowcases. I have two sets. I wash the dirty sheets, and while that is happening I put on the clean sheets.
2. If the sheets I'm washing are white, I toss in the washable snap-in shower curtain. This is one of those hotel style curtains where the snaps are only about 5' off the ground. When the curtain comes out of the washer, I snap it back up - it doesn't go into the dryer.
3. Wash our dirty clothes. Hang them or dry them and fold them. Wash towels and kitchen towels.
4. I alternate one bigger chore that takes an hour or two. On Week A, it's scrubbing the toilets, bathroom sinks, and shower/tub. On Week B, it's vacuuming and mopping the whole house.
The laundry is spread throughout the day. The focused bits are replacing the bedding (10 minutes) and on bathroom day, it takes about a half hour; on floor day, that takes about 2 hours. I pop on my headphones and listen to podcasts or music.
Every Wednesday, when I'm working from home, I do the following:
1. Clean out the dishwasher filter.
2. Clean the washing machine - wipe down the internals, everything I can reach with a wet wipe and/or paper towel, and pull out and hand wash the detergent dispenser. If you haven't done this in a while, the first time will be gross, but then it is really easy to maintain weekly.
3. Wet wipe the toilets.
This whole thing takes about 10-15 minutes.
If needed, I'll clean the toilets at other times throughout the week but only spend 1-2 minutes doing so.
posted by happy_cat at 7:34 AM
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I use the Tody app and it has been a game changer for me. It takes a little bit of work to set it up and tweak. After that, you just do your individual tasks for the day and you are done. Very little thinking about what has to be done that day or getting into a routine, the app does that for you. I've set it so that I am doing tasks in different rooms every day which overall keeps the whole house cleaner at any one time and I don't feel overwhelmed by any one room.
The key is to break down your cleaning into discrete tasks that are doable in a short time. "Clean the bathroom" is much too vague. "Clean the bathroom sink" is specific and done with little effort.
posted by Preserver at 8:07 AM
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Whenever I'm on the phone, I put clothes away, wash dishes or sweep the floor. "Don't put it down, just put it away" is on repeat in my head all day long & it's really helped.
posted by ColdIcedT at 8:33 AM
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Every morning before starting work and every evening before bed, I do a quick shuffle around the house to return everything to its proper place.
Every time I finish brushing my teeth, I grab a square of TP and wipe down the mirror, counter, taps, and sink. (Keep an extra roll under the sink if you don't like the idea of using TP that's been hanging beside the toilet.)
After every shower I squeegee down the glass doors and tile.
After every #2 I give the toilet bowl a quick squirt of cleaner and scrub with the brush.
Also every night before bed, I give the kitchen countertops and sink a quick wipe with a damp cloth, sweep the floor, and use one of those Swiffer-type mops with an integrated water sprayer and reusable pad to mop the kitchen.
In the morning before I start WFH, I list out a few 10 min tasks to do that day on breaks, usually vacuuming with cordless vac, dusting, deep(er) cleaning a sink with Soft Scrub or the stovetop with stovetop cleaner, etc., actually Windexing the shower, etc.
This keeps the house pretty presentable most of the time, laundry I do on the weekends along with deep cleaning stuff as the need arises.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 8:38 AM
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I have specific tasks for specific days, as outlined above, and alerts set to go off when it is time to perform those tasks. The tasks are performed regardless of whether or not they "need" to be done -- maybe they'll get done faster (no work needed), but they'll still be "done". I also don't scramble -- if I miss a day due to work stuff, then I leave those tasks alone, and get them next week.
...but I also invested in machines that can perform tasks for me. Fancy dishwasher that's nearly silent. Floor vacuum robot. A scrubbing brush that attaches to a drill, so I can scrub the grout in my tile shower a zillion times faster. And so on.
posted by aramaic at 8:43 AM
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There are so many lists, so search House Cleaning List. Even when I kept my house pretty clean, I never kept to rigorous schedules. Change the sheets every few weeks. Clean the toilet pretty often, and wipe bathroom surfaces frequently.
posted by theora55 at 8:44 AM
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Oh yeah, and I feel this merits a separate comment, trying to keep the house clean is a fool's errand until you have thoroughly decluttered everything, because constantly dealing with migrating piles of papers on surfaces, jumbled drawers full of mystery items, and cartoon-style closets with junk that jumps out at you when you open the door will wear down your willpower to stick to even the simplest of routines. Those zip-up IKEA closet storage boxes and shelf risers are my best friends. Also, if I haven't used it in six months, it had better be a tax document or my wedding dress, or it's headed to the trash can or a charity shop.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 8:45 AM
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It's not without thinking (yet), but I've been keeping an old toothbrush in my shower, and every shower after it's been steamy for a while, I take 1-2 mins to scrub some grout or tile that looks grody.
(And at the risk of sounding like I don't clean my shower -- I do! But somehow after I've sprayed cleaner, scrubbed, rinsed, and the shower dries, the scum and crud reveals itself again. Toothbrush on a hot steamy shower works better for me.)
posted by Drosera at 9:46 AM
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I also use the Tody app and love it. I know I won't actually clean often enough to make a particular day of the week vacuuming day or bathroom cleaning day, and I sure won't shine my sink daily like FlyLady, so I set plausible frequencies for specific chores and let the app remind me when they're coming due. If the app tells me to clean something and it doesn't seem dirty yet, or if something seems dirty but the app hasn't yet told me to clean it, I adjust the timing intervals. After a while, I don't really have to think about those chores anymore, because the app knows when they really need to be done to keep the place looking okay. In practice, I take one weekend day to check the app and do the things that are asking to be done, just because that works better for me than trying to do 20 minutes of chores a day or something. It can certainly support either approach.
That said, I also have a rule that if I see something that needs to be done and it's only going to take two minutes, I have to just do it, no arguments. That's how stuff gets put away and small messes get cleaned up and such.
I also agree that cleaning-type maintenance is a million times easier when you've thoroughly decluttered. I've been overwhelmed lately and clutter is building up and it really interferes with everything. But I can still check Tody when I'm feeling up to it, and it'll give me a few specific things to do, and then I know that those things, at least, will be fine for another two weeks or month or whatever. I've had a hard time lately but at least my toilets aren't gross.
posted by kite at 10:51 AM
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I also only end up cleaning when people are coming over so I started scheduling a monthly movie night at my house, in no small part because it forces me to really clean everything once a month.
posted by LeeLanded at 12:54 PM
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All of the above, absolutely! But with regard to How did you get from "clean infrequently when it gets bad enough" to "clean more frequently so it never gets bad"?
There's a certain amount of hunker-down-and-do-it to this but as with most things, it's a decision that you make; you have chosen to do this willingly as opposed to unwillingly. Once you've made that choice things will go a lot more smoothly. With the decision made, you need to make a list of things that you want and need to be cleaned and when, and you must follow that list each week as best as you can. In a few weeks to a month you'll find that the cleaning is becoming more routine, habitual and taking less conscious intent.
In my home some things just have to happen on the regular so it's easier to make the decision. For example, I clean the tub and shower space at least once a week because if I don't I'll have to use far more elbow grease and/or chemicals than I really want to. If I don't dust at least once a week things get really really dusty and I don't like the idea of breathing in all that disturbed dust. Do you have anything similar at your place? If you do, start there.
Give yourself incentive by making it fun! Turn up the tunes and play your favourite music. Put a podcast on. Listen to a book. Make yourself a special snack and beverage. Treat yourself to something special, whatever that might be.
While it may not have an earth-shattering impact, cleaning has its own rewards and you should make sure that you know what they are for you and that you acknowledge to yourself that you've done a good job.
posted by ashbury at 2:13 PM
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One routine our family swears by is to make Thursday night our main weekly chore session. Usually, we order a pizza and tidy up the entire house, get all the laundry, vaccuming/sweeping and yard work done. In recent years when our budget allows we also do an instacart order of groceries. If the entire family can pitch in you can get a ton of chores done from say 6 to 930. Then, go to bed, get through the last day of work on Friday, and you can start the weekend without a butt load of chores staring you in the face.
A couple of tricks I learned is if all the sinks and toilets in the house are kept clean and scrubbed every day (rarely takes more than 10mins), dirty dishes are not allowed to pile up, and beds are made each morning, the whole house just feels clean and tidy, even if it's not.
posted by fortitude25 at 2:43 PM
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So much good advice in this thread that I don't have much to add.
But I will say that keeping a squeegee in your shower and using it to get rid of as much water as you can is really helpful for cutting down on how frequently you have to do a full clean of the shower.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 5:05 PM
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I work from home most days. Dishes get unloaded and loaded between meetings when I need to get up from my desk. I feel like I wipe down the counter pretty much any time I am in the kitchen. I run my iRobot sweeper every day. Laundry is only on weekends.
posted by redlines at 5:46 PM
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How did you get from "clean infrequently when it gets bad enough" to "clean more frequently so it never gets bad"?
I have a cleaner.
A big function of this is they are my accountability partner: I clean for the cleaner. I tidy everything up and do the washing up the morning they are due then they clean. This happens once per fortnight.
The rest of the time I do not have too much stuff relative to my storage setup. I give surplus stuff away to the thrift store. And I have low standards.
I try to time houseguests for the evening of the day the cleaner comes.
posted by Erinaceus europaeus at 8:44 PM
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I do something I call "the big three" daily. (1) Dishes, (2) Laundry, (3) Trash. They are attached to the "trigger" of returning home from school drop off. I do them as soon as I get home and in that order.
Otherwise, my recent system has been to assign a floor of the house to a day of the week. Attic office Monday, Bedrooms Floor Tuesday, First Floor Wednesday, Basement Thursday, Car and Front Porch Friday.
I also timebox my cleaning to two hours total a day. This really helps. I'm not blowing all my energy on a "big clean" and then not feeling up to it for a long time. Instead, I'm steadily working the problem. Finally, during that time limit of 2 hours, I work in alternating 20 min stretches (20 min cleaning, 20 mins doing email work or cooking or just any other kind of work). This helps me stave off the boredom of cleaning, get other types of work done, and also the min timeline of "you only have to do this for 20 minutes" helps when I'm not wanting to do it.
posted by CMcG at 1:22 AM
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I agree that the 2-minute rule (if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it immediately) is a vital part of turning into a tidier person overall, and I have an auxiliary rule of "clean it when you use it" that especially applies to wet areas: bathroom and kitchen, plus lawn/garden tools to keep them in good shape.
If you clean the toilet every morning after your first pee of the day, it takes 45 seconds because it's never really dirty or dusty. Putting away items you use takes a couple seconds more than dropping them on the counter. Wiping down the counter, sink, and mirror takes one minute if you do it every day after you brush your teeth. And while I am immensely guilty of this, it takes almost the same number of seconds to put a dirty dish in the dishwasher as it does to put it in the sink, and it takes mayyybe 60 seconds to wash a plate and a glass. I tidy my desk during camera-off zoom meetings at work. I reset my nightstand and dresser-top as part of my going-to-bed routine.
I don't do any of this perfectly. The nightstand gets cluttered sometimes, and the desk, and the coffee table and kitchen counters. But rarely are all of them are a disaster at the same time, and again none of these tasks actually take more than 5-8 minutes.
My mother is the person you imagine who has a tidy space at all times, and it's just as simple as Always Be Cleaning. Like, honestly, I just spent a month at her house and had to bite my tongue, because if I set something down she will swoop in and throw it away. If she pauses mid-project, everything goes back where it belongs. There's no "leave it until morning", there's not much "finish it later". She blames being an Army brat in the 50s when her father's CO would come inspect their residences without warning, but whatever it is she just doesn't do messes. And she's got Systems for making everything she does as easy to clean up as possible. I'm not that good, but I do recognize it IS that simple...once you get dug out and declutter and make a place for everything to go.
I only keep a few plates, bowls, and glasses available and the rest get packed away as replacements - it's much harder to fill a sink entirely full of dishes when you don't have enough to fill a sink. I don't have that many clothes, or bath towels. I DO have a large number of flour sack towels and washcloths that I use for both personal care and domestic cleaning - maybe 20 of the former and 40 of the latter - because all of them take up maybe 14 square inches of storage or washing machine space. They get hung up to dry and then dropped into a dedicated hamper in the same spot I dry them, and then they go in a single fortnightly load with the bath and kitchen towels plus lingerie bags of any socks we've dirtied in two weeks - one of the few "long tail" chores I allow because I'd rather have a fullish load and our bath towels don't need that much cleaning because we're clean when we use them. The only other batch-type/whole-house chores we do are vacuuming and dusting, but we use a small broom and dustpan more frequently in all hard-floor areas.
I use a lot of internal narrative about Future Me and Past Me. Past Me has historically been kind of an asshole to Future Me, leaving a looooot of shit for her to deal with, and she's not any better at it than Past Me. So this needs to be a collaboration between the two, and they definitely cover for each other sometimes, but I try to make it a fair partnership in which Past Me doesn't leave an overflow of tasks for Future Me to do, and Future Me tries to be tidier and more efficient as she goes.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:00 AM
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External accountability is the most consistently helpful tool for me. I have people over semi-regularly, which helps a lot.
I line-dry laundry, and the weather provides enough external pressure that I actively look for opportunities to start a load.
I also play with the idea of "Future Me" as a person who would appreciate any cleaning efforts I choose to make.
UFYH is my go-to for when I have time to clean but do not want to, or don't want to think about where to start.
posted by mersen at 9:27 AM
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All of the above is amazing advice. I started writing some of it myself (making sure all the dishes are done every night has been foundational for me), but really the answer is - I got a job where I work from home three days a week. I work two jobs, and before this I left for work at 7am and got home around 9pm. All of the hacks and good habits in the world weren't enough to keep up with the complete lack of energy and time. Even then, it took time to build good habits, especially ones that could hold up to life getting stressful! So, just to say, if your life is asking a lot of you right now give yourself some grace.
posted by MartialParts at 4:45 PM
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OHHHH I have a Laundry System For You.
If there are more than 2 people in your house, you probably need to run a load of laundry every single day. But sorting laundry and putting laundry away sucks so you need A System to make that easier.
First: buy a ton of underwear so you don't run out. Make sure you have enough of each category of clothing to last about 10 days without doing laundry. Whatever it is you run out of first? Buy some more. That means laundry will never become an emergency.
Now, here's the system: Get more hampers so you can sort laundry as it comes off your body - at the moment of putting it into a specific hamper.
Use the multiple hampers to sort laundry by the type of wash/dry they need. I like Ikea Skubb hampers - they fit perfectly in the bottom of a closet or in a pax wardrobe, and the rectangular shape means no wasted space. If you are two adults, you need at least 3-4 hampers in the bedroom, so they will fill the bottom of your closet. My family of four people has EIGHT hampers, all tucked away in closets and wardrobes.
Here's the new thing that nobody does but everyone should do: Only one type of laundry goes into each hamper. When multiple hampers live side by side, you have to LABEL THEM so people know what goes where. Now, YOU SORT THE DIRTY CLOTHES AS YOU UNDRESS. Here's what I put into each labelled hamper:
1. LIGHT LINTY - Adult light-coloured cotton clothes, like Tshirts and white socks, which all create white lint - get a long cold wash with oxyclean, then dryer. Separating clothing by its lint colour means your whites stay white and your blacks don't get covered in white lint!
2. DARK LINTY - Adult dark-coloured cotton clothes, like jeans, black socks, which create dark lint - long cold wash, then hang the jeans and toss the rest into the dryer.
3. SILKY - My delicate, silky clothes, like polyester work blouses, lululemon spandex, and undies (I keep a mesh bag in this hamper for bras) - these items get a short cold wash, hang dry. The colours on these clothes don't run, so I don't separate them by colour. But I do not want them washed with thick rough items like jeans zippers, because they'll pick up tons of lint, and being agitated with hard fabrics and metal zippers will pill and snag my nice clothes.
4. CHILD 1 - Little kid's muddy clothes, mostly dark colours - long cold wash, extra oxyclean, dryer. The sand never fully comes off these items, so I don't mix them into other people's clothes because we don't like sand.
5. CHILD 2 - Toddler's food-splattered clothes, light colours - long hot wash, extra oxyclean, dryer. Hypothetically these could be washed with my clothes but I separate them because sometimes they get stinky from the spilled food, and I don't like to smell like old yogurt.
6. DARK TOWELS - cold wash, oxyclean, dryer
7. WHITE TOWELS & SHEETS - hot wash, oxyclean, dryer (separate the towels by colour to avoid dingy whites and linty darks)
8. KITCHEN TOWELS - hot wash, oxyclean, dryer. This hamper is smaller and made of very breathe-able plastic mesh, so the towels don't get mouldy. It lives in the closet beside the kitchen. Kitchen towels are prone to being stinky from all the protein so they never mix with clothing or bath towels.
Now I know my 8-hamper system sounds insane, but hear me out - it means that when any one hamper gets full, it's already filled with items that all require the exact same treatment, so there is NO SORTING! No pile of laundry on the floor! You just chuck that entire hamper's contents into the wash, and it's a perfect full load that belongs together. No thinking at all. No lint because all the same-coloured linty clothes are already hampered together. AND, that one hamper-load is all the same kind of clothing so it all gets put alway in the same room! Putting away becomes so much faster! This system honestly makes doing laundry so fast and painless!
Now 8 hampers is a lot but remember I have 2 kids. If you don't have kids, you can probably get by with 4 hampers. Before kids, Hubs and I had just 4: My silkies, our rough linty lights, our rough linty darks, all sheets, bath towels, and kitchen towels (we could wash the kitchen towels with sheets because they weren't wiping spilled milk all day so they didn't stink!)
The other benefit of 8 hampers is that it's one a day and an extra load on the weekend. So I usually run a load first thing in the morning and by 11am it's done. Laundry is now easy and efficient.
Anyway, try my system, highly recommend, hope you love it!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:12 PM
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