How to clean a house: what’s involved in spring-cleaning?

As every household is different, it's not so easy to come up with a standard deep cleaning a house checklist. The following tips apply to tidying up and cleaning your house. Not just to cleaning your house quickly, they apply to thorough house cleaning too:

• The golden rule for cleaning a house is: clean from top to bottom. This rule applies to the house as a whole and to each room individually. 
• Work well begun is half done. Make sure you have the right cleaning products and materials before you start cleaning. For example, a ladder, bucket, mop, sponges etc and enough cleaning products too. Check what you have in the way of materials and stuff. A wooden floor is not cleaned in the same way as a laminate one. Natural stone in the bathroom needs different products than tiles.
• Take your time. 
• Open all the windows during cleaning. 
• Tackle one thing at a time. If you want to clean the cupboards, don't empty them all at the same time. 
• Work room by room.
• Ask for help, because teamwork is the answer when you clean a house.

It is perfectly possible to clean the bathroom in your house in 15 minutes. But...your bathroom can do with a deep clean from time to time. Besides the action plan for cleaning your bathroom, which we have written about before, there are things you should not forget during spring-cleaning. Spring-cleaning is the perfect opportunity to deal with the following jobs:

• Clean your hairbrush and comb. Don't forget your make-up brushes, because cleaning brushes regularly will kill bacteria and prevent skin problems. 
• Descale the shower head properly by unscrewing it from the hose.
• Wash your shower curtain if you have one.
• Clean your shower cubicle properly. 
• Clean the toilet thoroughly and remove any brown stains.
• Clean the grouting. 

Do you have mould in the bathroom? Here you can read our tips for the quicky and easy way to remove mould in the bathroom.

A clean bedroom looks more attractive but is also better for your health. As we spend about one-third of our lives asleep, spring-cleaning the bedroom should not be skipped on your house cleaning schedule. For example:

• Wash duvets and pillows.
• Wash the curtains.
• Clean the mattress.
• Remove stains from your mattress.
• Tidy up all the drawers and cupboards.
• Vacuum the floor and, yes, under the bed too.

We produced an action plan for cleaning the kitchen before. Your kitchen could do with an annual spring-clean. When you spring-clean the kitchen, you could:

• Start by throwing away everything that is past the expiry date, such as tinned food, herbs, dry goods, food in the fridge. That creates room in your storage cupboards and the fridge. Don't forget to clean the inside of your cupboards, the fridge and the freezer. Remember to clean the rubber seals.
• Throw unnecessary stuff on the worktop away. You will have your precious space back. 
• Clean the filters of your cooker hood
• Clean your dishwasher
• Clean the oven and the microwave on the inside. Here you can read more about how to clean your oven.

Do you have a stainless-steel kitchen? Use these tips to clean stainless steel.

Cleaning the toilet is one of the most important household jobs. Most likely you clean the toilet regularly anyway, possibly even by using our tips for cleaning a toilet. However, you cannot and should not skip the toilet when you spring-clean your house. Often things, such as the lamp, any mats, the bin, the walls, the pipes and the underside of the toilet are skipped when we give the toilet a quick clean. During spring-cleaning it is important to do the regular jobs, and to clean these things.

Chances are that you regularly clean the floor when you clean your house. But do you always include the walls or the ceilings in your house? If the answer is ‘no’, you can include the walls and ceilings on your house cleaning list. On this page you find lots of tips for cleaning floors and walls, such as cleaning the carpet, grouting and oiling a wooden floor. 

If you’re working on the walls anyway, remember to clean the internal doors and their frames to deep clean your house.

To help you with your house cleaning schedule, we have produced a convenient checklist for all the rooms in a house.

If you have a good tip for how to clean your house, please let us know!