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Permies Poll: How often are you cleaning your house?

posted 3 months ago

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How often do you find yourself cleaning in your house? I'm talking about intentionally spending time going through rooms cleaning top-to-bottom, not just spot cleaning messes.

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Timothy Norton

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posted 3 months ago

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My household gets a general overall cleaning once a week, usually on the weekend when I am not at my worky job during the day. Dog hair requires spot checks throughout the week but nothing extreme.

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John F Dean

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posted 3 months ago

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Constantly. Of course, our fireplace produces a significant amount of our heat ….and dust. My wife and I have declared war on the clutter. On Thursday I hauled out 29 bags for recycling, Salvation Army, garbage. This Thursday I expect another 30 bags to go out. I hope to continue the push until the end of the year.

Update 12/29:
The above has proven to be optimistic. We have moved on from “ household” clutter…cleaning the kitchen, closets, etc. … to the basement, barn, and attic. At the end of the year, over 100 garbage bags have gone out. I think the most amazing aspect is the number of magazines we saved that we were never realistically going to read again.

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Hugo Morvan

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posted 3 months ago

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Does doing the dishes count?
Otherwise I'd have to say twice a year I find time.

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Suzette Thib

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Location: South Zone 7/8 - Formerly Deep South, Zone 9

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posted 3 months ago

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Eight in the home. Five pets. We clean every day, something or the other and I try to declutter/ pare down an area every weekend or the evening if I power through!

"The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command." -Samwise Gamgee, J.R.R. Tolkien

Anne Miller

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posted 3 months ago

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Doing some little chores everyday makes the work much easier.

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Judith Browning

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posted 3 months ago

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We deep clean (what we call deep clean) when company's coming for a few days of overnight visiting....so maybe 3-4 times a year?
Otherwise we are pretty neat and tidy....just the two of us now, no indoor pets so not a lot to keep up with.

Maybe I should ask what you mean by 'clean from top to bottom'?

Did I ever tell about milking our goats in the cabin and raising an orphaned lamb in the kitchen? ...all in the past but I think house cleaning is relative to life style maybe?

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Christopher Weeks

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posted 3 months ago

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Timothy Norton wrote:How often do you find yourself cleaning in your house?

Every day.

I'm talking about intentionally spending time going through rooms cleaning top-to-bottom, not just spot cleaning messes.

Except, I'm also not sure how to interpret that. Almost never? That's just not how we break up our chores. I'm *much* more likely to vacuum and spot mop the entire first floor than I am to clean the kitchen "top to bottom" as that plays out in my head.

We do usually do a big spring and fall push where everyone takes chores and we do a whole lot over a week.

Also, it's interesting how house-cleaning expectations work. I've been in peoples' homes that were so dirty that it kind of stressed me out. But I'm far from a clean-freak and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find someone say the same thing about the way we keep house.

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Riona Abhainn

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Location: Milwaukie Oregon, USA zone 8b

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posted 3 months ago

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Admittedly we're not great about getting tasks done here, in general, and my husband and I both don't enjoy cleaning, like at all. I have a list of chores that I rotate through, they don't happen all the time, I just work on them when I can. We've been in this house for 6 months now and I'm hoping to hire someone once a year to do a deep clean, dusting the kirio cabinets, etc.

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Nancy Reading

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posted 3 months ago

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Thank you so much for posting this!!! i now feel more normal

I'm so glad I'm not alone in only cleaning significantly when we're expecting visitors to stay. It's usually Xmas, so we are doing declutter and clean at the moment.... One day, in my four dimensional organised house, it will be worth cleaning more often, but there is a phrase 'polishing shit' which comes to mind at the moment.
We do wipe and run the vacuum/brush around everynow and again, but actually going into the hidden corners and sorting stuff that has accumulated out of the way is far less frequent.

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Tereza Okava

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posted 3 months ago

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"Top to bottom" sounds a bit intense! To me that level means washing the curtains and dusting the tops of the doors, decluttering the cabinets and scrubbing the ceilings; we do that maybe twice a year, once when we are hosting a party or something and then usually again at the end of the year (we usually maintain the Japanese tradition of "big cleaning" before January-- also a time to fix and resolve all the things we've been putting off around the house).
I do a basic clean twice a week, Tuesday and Friday evenings at the end of my workday. We keep up with things around the house and my house is very small (those things mutually help each other-- in a place this small everything needs to be in its place), so it takes me literally no more than 15 minutes. Dust and spray down surfaces, take out all trash cans, vacuum, mop the floors and switch out the throw rugs and dog blankets.
This level of cleaning isn't super intense but it's enough that if I had unexpected visitors drop by for tea and cake and take some pictures, it would be okay.

Christopher Weeks

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posted 3 months ago

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I have to imagine the people voting "multiple times a day" have something completely different in mind than those voting "yearly".

Timothy Norton

Steward of piddlers

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Location: Upstate New York, Zone 5b, 43 inch Avg. Rainfall

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posted 3 months ago

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Christopher Weeks wrote:I have to imagine the people voting "multiple times a day" have something completely different in mind than those voting "yearly".

You know, these polls are fun because of observations like this. Am I asking the right question? In this case I don't think I have defined what-is-cleaning specifically enough.

John F Dean

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posted 3 months ago

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Wait… do you actually mean that the entire house is clean at the same point in time? Fascinating concept!

I want to be 15 again …so I can ruin my life differently.

L Gaudette

Posts: 12

posted 3 months ago

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Timothy Norton wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:I have to imagine the people voting "multiple times a day" have something completely different in mind than those voting "yearly".

You know, these polls are fun because of observations like this. Am I asking the right question? In this case I don't think I have defined what-is-cleaning specifically enough.

I can imagine someone who is very clean constantly doing small things with with slightly bigger things on a rotation answering once a year because that's when they have a spring cleaning day where they're moving appliances and washing the drapes! That kind of person could also interpret it differently and say multiple times per day, but, say, they might sweep the kitchen quickly after each meal, vacuum the front entrance area every 2nd day, do one bathroom on Mondays and mop the kitchen floor on Tuesdays and Fridays and another bathroom on Wednesdays, etc.

I am not such a person and we have cleaners come every 2 weeks.

Suzette Thib

pollinator

Posts: 121

Location: South Zone 7/8 - Formerly Deep South, Zone 9

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posted 3 months ago

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Nancy Reading wrote:Thank you so much for posting this!!! i now feel more normal I'm so glad I'm not alone in only cleaning significantly when we're expecting visitors to stay. It's usually Xmas, so we are doing declutter and clean at the moment.... One day, in my four dimensional organised house, it will be worth cleaning more often, but there is a phrase 'polishing shit' which comes to mind at the moment.
We do wipe and run the vacuum/brush around everynow and again, but actually going into the hidden corners and sorting stuff that has accumulated out of the way is far less frequent.

This is the thing! When I am really myself and reusing and repurposing...well, nothing looks quite like Southern Living Magazines; not to mention that we usually have old homes that we try to use up and repair instead of the trendy "upgrading."

"The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command." -Samwise Gamgee, J.R.R. Tolkien

Judith Browning

Posts: 10095

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

3294

posted 3 months ago

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well, here's the thing about 'deep' cleaning....those corners are where the cellar spiders live and their presence deters the brown recluse...they have an important job and I try not to disturb them too often...I had to argue quite seriously for their corner rights.

https://permies.com/t/8438/jumping-spiders-daddy-longlegs-house#344879

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Nancy Reading

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Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year

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posted 3 months ago

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Judith Browning wrote:well, here's the thing about 'deep' cleaning....those corners are where the cellar spiders live

You make a good point (and I'll steal it!) the spider webs catch the midges and buzzy flies that get in the house for me.

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Jon Stewart

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posted 2 months ago

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A simple tip: focus on natural, non-toxic cleaners and tackle one area at a time—it makes house cleaning way less overwhelming!

Tess Misch

pioneer

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posted 1 month ago

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I clean daily: floors (at least a good sweep), dishes, countertops, stove, kitchen & bathroom sinks; a few times a week/as needed: vacuum, dusting, laundry of various types, mop floors; weekly: bed laundry, towels (kit. & bath), a quick clean of fridge as needed, shower; if I have rugs I do rugs as often as necessary; Monthly: mini deep-clean of closets, rooms, etc. to keep maintenance up; a quick purge of items if needed; Every few months to yearly: seasonal cleaning & packing or unpacking; deep clean of less used spaces. As I live in an apartment, it doesn't take as much time for most of this, and it doesn't get as dirty as quickly as a larger house. When I did live in my own house I had a much more detailed routine to keep & maintain cleanliness & order. --Tess

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Helen Siddall-Butchers

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posted 1 month ago

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This is a great question, but, as already stated, I think clarification is necessary!

We used to have cleaners weekly for a couple of hours, because we never felt "clean" and the house always had a 'grubby' feel to it.

We've been slowly upgrading through building works... proper insulation, good windows, big floor tiles instead of the small "more grout than tile" cracked mess that was there before. Proper tile baseboards. And vast amounts of decluttering.

All the parts of the house that have been upgraded now only need a quick sweep and mop a couple of times a week, and windows cleaned when they need it (depends on season).

We have no shelves or windowsills, so almost no dusting. No more mould because of the insulation.

The two rooms still to be done are dirty. However hard we work, they stay grubby feeling. We have 'knobbly' plaster in those rooms that hold every particle of dust. The windows let in dust round the edges. The cracked small tiles and endless grout on the floor could be constantly scrubbed and not look or feel clean. Mould grows where there's no insulation. And we haven't finished decluttering them so there's 'stuff' for dust to land on.

But we have plans for both rooms to be done in the same way as the rest of the house by next year, so at that point I imagine there'll be hardly any in depth cleaning, and yet it will be clean! Wahhoo!!

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