For those without cleaners- sharing your cleaning routine

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the first time in a decade, we will be without a house cleaning service. I don’t mind cleaning, but we are a busy family and I want to keep a clean house as efficiently as possible.

Our house is large-
bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs
Kitchen, bathroom, living, dining and playroom on the main level
Family room, guest room and bathroom in basement

Please share your cleaning schedule/routine if you do not have an outside cleaner come in.

Is it a financial reason? I would advise to keep cleaners. Our hold is old and gets dusty fast. The best money we spend is on house cleaning. Just had overlap for 3 weeks without them and it was unpleasant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Uh, I clean when things smell or are so filthy I can't stand it anymore. Pretty sure there's mold in my shower.

There's mold in most showers.

[Anonymous]

Fascinated with the person "scouring" everything. Is that the cleaner, like barkeeps friend/comet or the instrument like scrub brush/brillo pad or both?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a cleaner for years and do it myself now as a weekly cleaner wasn't really getting things clean.

So like a PP, it takes me longer and the rooms are never all clean at once, but they are cleaner overall.

Just one example is that my floors aren't all clean after the weekly cleaner, but now I run the robo vac frequently and deep clean different areas so my floors are really clean in general. Before when I wiped up spills, the paper towels were black. Now, even with less frequent cleaning, wiping up spills and it's just the spill on the paper towel.

Same with the bathrooms. If I'm cleaning showers, I get in there with limex and descale the fixtures, clean the grout so nothing can build up- even if it's a less frequent overall clean. It's just cleaner.

Having cleaners is great, but 95% of them will never clean stuff the way you will. Or the way that you ought to, anyway. And the services like Merry Maids won't even get close. They are great for keeping on top of it all, though.

[Anonymous]

How does everyone clean the soap scum from shower glass?

[Anonymous]

The most successful I've ever been at this was by having a chore chart for the entire family (including two tweens/teens at the time). Every week we'd list out one item for each person to do every day. I rotated the big items (wash sheets, clean shower/tub) with smaller items (sweep kitchen floor) depending on what else each person had going on each day. Some items showed up every week or even multiple times a week, others rotated in when I realized that they hadn't been done for a while. It even helped me, I found it easier to motivate myself to clean if the chore chart said "MOM - CLEAN WINDOWS" in bright pink letters.

Sadly, we let life get in the way and I stopped being so disciplined about making a new list every week. Now we just clean things when they get noticeable, and tell the one teen still at home when he needs to help.

[Anonymous]

[url]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly our standards are just kinda low. We have busy jobs, one tween, and a dog.

Clean kitchen counters and sink every night, microwave as needed.
Floors every weekend. Laundry all weekend.
Bathrooms when I notice, usually on a weekend.
Everything else on the main level gets done in a frantic spurt before people come over.

Some low-impact intermittent things, like wiping blinds or doors/trim, I pay my tween to do on her days off school.

Pretty much this except have two teens and our dog is non-shedding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had a cleaner for years and do it myself now as a weekly cleaner wasn't really getting things clean.

So like a PP, it takes me longer and the rooms are never all clean at once, but they are cleaner overall.

Just one example is that my floors aren't all clean after the weekly cleaner, but now I run the robo vac frequently and deep clean different areas so my floors are really clean in general. Before when I wiped up spills, the paper towels were black. Now, even with less frequent cleaning, wiping up spills and it's just the spill on the paper towel.

Same with the bathrooms. If I'm cleaning showers, I get in there with limex and descale the fixtures, clean the grout so nothing can build up- even if it's a less frequent overall clean. It's just cleaner.

Having cleaners is great, but 95% of them will never clean stuff the way you will. Or the way that you ought to, anyway. And the services like Merry Maids won't even get close. They are great for keeping on top of it all, though.

I'm the person you're responding to and I agree that services don't get close but are great options for people who just want to stay ahead of the mess. I don't begrudge anyone that. For my personal situation though, I had a cleaner who didn't want to go from weekly to bi-weekly, and rather than find someone new and going through the trust/stealing/breaking/not cleaning drama I decided to tackle it myself and I'm happier. I was cleaning before and after the cleaner anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How does everyone clean the soap scum from shower glass?

For the inside I use one of those battery powered scrubbers + a cleaner sold for soap scum on glass. It's prety easy. I can't figure out how to do the outside, though.

[Anonymous]

I prefer to have a day designation for certain chores (bathrooms, changing beds, vacuuming etc). Once you have accomplished chore x, it frees up that little voice on my shoulders that I should be doing more. For me, it’s a mental thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh, I clean when things smell or are so filthy I can't stand it anymore. Pretty sure there's mold in my shower.

There's mold in most showers.

I used to have this issue but have either been spraying a mixture of bleach ➕ warm H2O on the surface after showers when needed & this has been great at eradicating unsightly mold.
Or I also sometimes just use a store bought mold/mildew spray to squirt after showering.

It is important to do all of this directly or shortly after showering/bathing when the surface tends to still be moist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you both work? Do you both work out of the house? How old are your kids and how many do you have?

We both work- husband travels frequently, wife works from home full time. Kids are 7. We also have a dog that sheds.

Pets make it so much harder (I have two dogs). I imagine kids do as well, but I don't have them.

My cat died recently and I'm really, really sad about it and miss him a lot, but I have also discovered that I really only need to vacuum once a week when we don't have a pet, whereas before I used to vacuum certain areas daily. And I'm not like some obsessive cleaner, he just shed a lot and his food area got messy very quickly and I also stayed vigilant about the part of the hallway where he'd walk after using the litter in the garage because I didn't want to have litter tracked in the house and he couldn't help it.

Similar story here. My cat died about a year ago, and although I've never been without a cat I did not get a new one right away and at this point I'm enjoying having a cleaner house and probably won't get one anytime soon. He tracked litter everywhere, including the kitchen counter, which is pretty gross.

[Anonymous]

When we didn't have cleaners and before kids I would do the bathrooms in a whirlwind every Saturday morning. Husband did all laundry continuously all week. Washed sheets and towels on Fridays.
Dishes and counters have always been daily anyway.
One day a week to sort all the entry way and counter paper.
Vacuum everything one evening a week as the other person made dinner.
Our house is not that large though.
We have weekly cleaners now but I clean the fridge once a month as it's somehow gets grimy.

[Anonymous]

Some of you people are nuts. It is ok for the house to be a little dirty. You do not need to vacuum up dog hair multiple times a day or even every day.

[Anonymous]

I clean when I notice something needs cleaning. Before guests come, I pay more attention.