Anonymous wrote:It's amazing how passionate some of these threads can get! I grew up in a very large home in Potomac while my husband did not. He wanted the big home so I agreed to it under the stipulation that we would be pulling equal weight when it came to maintaining the home. He agreed and it has worked out just fine for us in our 5k foot home. Here's how we make it work without help on a consistent basis -
DAILY:
Both of us are fairly clean people so we always clean up the kitchen (wipe down the counters, put dishes away) each evening after dinner. A few times a week one of us will vacuum the kitchen and family room. Central vac with "hide a hose" has been a life-saver and highly recommend if you build a new home!
WEEKLY:
Now, one of the weekend mornings we spend cleaning the whole house. Each of us takes a level and can be done 1.5 hours if we're focused haha. I think the most helpful thing we did was keep a set of cleaning supplies on each floor so you're not running around looking for things or waiting for someone to be done with the vacuum so you can use it upstairs. Husband usually uses the central vac downstairs with all the furniture and floors while I just use the Dyson we keep upstairs to do the bedrooms. We keep cleaning caddies in our upstairs laundry room and one under the kitchen sink. Each caddy has windex, Method Granite cleaner, Pine Sol, Fantastic, and a Swiffer Duster.
If he weren't willing to help out, I can guarantee we would NOT be living in this house. It's just too much to do on your own if you value any fun in your weekends. Every two or three months we do have a woman who comes in and does a deep clean of the house for $100 and she does all the detail-oriented work that needs attention from time to time (shower door tracks, top of refrigerator, baseboards, etc).
I hope this helps - it works for us.
Someone deep-cleans a 5000 square foot house for $100!!!!!!????