No Stupid Questions

Bold of you to assume my home is clean.

You're never going to be sterile; good enough is good enough.

Keep an abundance of cleaning supplies. Soaps and rags in the kitchen and the bathroom. Think about investing in a vacuum and a carpet cleaning machine. Edit = Also get more trash bins. One for the kitchen, one for the desk, one by the coffee table, one for the bathroom.
Some people find it easier to do one big push where they clean the whole house in one session; other folks like to do a little bit every day. Figure out which type you are.

Also, check and see what cleaners charge in your area. It might be worth it to have a pro come in and do the work for you. Figure out what your leisure time is worth to you and then compare.

I can't believe no one has said this... Don't wear shoes inside the house.

This will dramatically reduce the griminess of your floors.

Its a big commitment. You'll prioritise shoes you can just slide your feet into, or at least out of. I still have nice boots and stuff but wear them less often.

If you’re sweeping, it’s possible you’re kicking a lot of dust up in the air, so that by the time you’re done mopping, it has resettled back down on the floor. You could mitigate this by vacuuming instead, or opening your windows and using fans to blow air out of your house. But also, you’ll never get all of the dust anyway.

In newer construction, especially high-rise apartments, there’s a lot less dust. But in older buildings, it’s just an endless torrent, and the solution has been…

Robot vacuums

While they must be maintained, and won’t work well if you’re not diligent about picking up and keeping obstacles off the floor, they make it far easier to keep the whole house clean by reducing the overall volume of interior dust and debris inside the building envelope.

To illustrate (this will be gross) I change the bags about every month and weigh them and it’s usually ~1 kg (~2 lbs) per bag, and each year they remove roughly 30-40 kg (70-90 lbs). And every time I’ve cut them open to see what’s causing all the weight (or make sure nothing important was eaten) it appears to be mostly dust and hair.

It’s freaky thinking how all of that would be floating around, settling on surfaces, collecting in corners and crevices, saturating carpets and upholstery, and of course getting breathed in constantly. Instead I don’t have to manually dust and vacuum very often and our indoor AQI is usually better than outside.

So yeah. Robots.

Edit: added imperial mass equivalents

Keeping your house clean is a good thing to do. But it's easy to stray into obsession territory. There lies madness.

Remember we all have far more visitor microbes in our bodies than our own host cells. Life is dirty. Life is germy. Embrace this.

You don't need to live in a hoarder hell hole, but the sooner you accept that living is a messy business the more time you'll have to enjoy actually living. Cleaning tasks should be quick and efficient, not sterilization.

Beyond that, there's dusting, cleaning windows, sinks, countertops, bathrooms, and probably things I don't even consider.

Of all the items you've listed, I personally rank floors as the most important to clean, followed by bathrooms, countertops, sinks, windows, and finally dusting. These are in order of which are used more frequently and how easily they'd be noticed. A dirty window (on the outside) is rarely dirty enough to outright block the sunlight, but grime on the floor will be tracked into other rooms, worsening the issue. Bathrooms are used daily, so would bother me if they're not at least reasonably seemly.

For keep floor clean, the zeroth step is to prevent dirt and grime from coming in at the onset. A shoes-off policy in the home is probably the most substantial in this effort. That's not to say you have to go barefoot -- although I do think it's quite nice -- since indoor slippers or shoes are an option. The next step would be to rip out all wall-to-wall carpet, if possible. I have a full rant about the drawbacks of carpet, but it will suffice to say that carpet traps dust and dirt whereas hard surfaces like tile or laminate do not.

After that, you may need to identify what exactly is dirtying your floors. If it's loose particulate (eg food crumbs), that's going to need a different solution than if it's loose hairs, which is different than dust or clothes threads. Crumbs or hair might suggest localized sweeping in the kitchen or bathroom will be most effective, while dust or threads suggest you need to adjust your clothes dryer settings, or your central air system needs a new/different filter.

The thing to keep in mind with all this is that grime does not come from nowhere: there is always a source, and the evidence will lead you to what's most effective to keep your home maintained. Even if you conclude that the dust is fallout from the nearby coal-burning power station, there will still be things you can do, such as ~~campaigning for a fossil-fuel free world~~ electrostatic air filters or keeping doors closed when not needed.

I have a roomba to get rid of 80% every day. I strive to manually vacuum once a week, because the roomba doesn't do corners and some hard to reach bits. Nor can it do stairs, obviously. After vacuuming I run a steam mop over the floors, which is amazing and SO much faster than regular mopping, without any cleaning agents.

Since its a combination steam mop/hand thing, I also use it for the windows. That's not on any schedule, just when I think they're dirty.

I wetwipe the countertop after I make dinner, and I clean it with soap whenever it looks dirty enough to be worth the effort.

Honestly, things like wooden floors can be hand-scrubbed four or five times before being actually clean, but it feel that anything that's stuck on there after running the steam mop is probably not coming off during normal use, so it qualifies as clean enough.

I have 2 dogs and a cat and have hard floors throughout. The roboVac runs twice per day and is always FULL when I empty it after every run. In addition my roboMop runs 3 days a week. My job at home is no longer cleaning but, roboTending 😂

But yes, taking off your shoes from outdoors is a must. We all keep a pair birks just for use inside.

I pay someone to clean once a month. I hate cleaning and it's worth the $200 to me.

I keep my sink clear of dishes and take out my own trash, but the rest is just stuff I don't want to do.

Vacuum. It sucks up the dirt and traps it.

Brooms & mops were from the ancient days before electricity existed, and as you've experienced, the dirt just keeps circulating and never goes away. Endless filth & frustration.

i don't.

I have a mastiff. Truly clean will never be a thing again.

I'm a little late to the party but keep in mind that people who stay on top of cleaning and have sparkling houses are doing just that and nothing else because it is so time consuming. You don't want to invest all your free time (or all your time) into cleaning that will never end. Good enough is good enough.

Set a weekly cleaning day and stick to it. On weeks when you can't clean on that day, move it to a different day. Don't skip.

And no shoes inside, ever. Tracks in lots of filth, even when you think you have clean shoes.

Roomba twice a day. A dishwasher run every day. A biweekly cleaning by a professional, and a tolerance for some degree of chaos. We live in the world, not in some clean lab. There will be dirt, dust, clutter. Just don't let it get too much.

I have a yard of weeds, and a flower garden and a vegetable garden, some trees. It will never be a weed free environment in my gardens, I just try to advantage the plants I want, and keep the weeds under control not gone. Same with the house, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

The best advice I have is one I found on the internet: Whenever you walk through a room pick something up and dispose of it, or put it back in its place.

You'll never be able to get things clean - all you will be able to manage is "cleaner than it was before." It becomes easier if you accept that.

As someone with OCD in the form of germaphobia and excessive/repetitive cleaning, I recommend you see a doctor and get tested for OCD. Doing therapy massively improved my quality of life.

Routine.

As a wise friend once said about home repairs "It's easier to keep up than to catch up"

You can do a lot at once, you can do a little all the time but either way you have to clean regularly to stay on top of it.

I gave up keeping the floor clean, I'm the only one that cleaned in the house, any complaints about the dirt on the floor was met with "well you should be wearing shoes", any attempt at cleaning the clutter is met with the other household members stressed out because things changed. I take any W I can, but it's defo a learn to get used to it type of situation at least in my case, and dirt isn't going to go away sadly.

I had to start wearing slippers so I didn't feel the dirt and it stopped getting in my sheets, that might help you avoid noticing it as much if you don't already do so

We have a robot vacuum that runs automatically every day. And yea, it picks up a load of dust every day. Leaves me to do other stuff.

It feels like it’s never actually clean.

Keeping things neat and tidy is literally an endless battle against entropy.

I mean, it's not like I can get rid of the waterbugs in my eyelashes when I take a shower. Becoming truly "clean" would mean destroying all physical traces of, well, everything. We would have to be made of pure energy to be really "clean."

In short, the organic biological world in which we exist will always be interminably filthy.

Daily tidying tasks: dishes asap, litter box, laundry, spray cleaner on the shower after showering. Once a week the more laborious tasks get done: vacuuming, mopping etc. Bathrooms every 3 weeks or so. It’s a constant rotation that I would struggle with alone… my spouse and I tag-team all cleaning together so that helps. Consistency with cleaning helps everything to stay relatively clean. If it ever gets to be too much to keep up with in the future, we’ve agreed that a weekly cleaner might be a good option to help us maintain.

Make sure that you cleaning routine is top to bottom. Wipe off the blinds, wipe the counters and appliances, moving down until the floor, which is last. Even if it isn’t perfect, it’s better than completely dirty, right? Progress is progress.

I do the dishes as soon as possible, wipe the kitchen surfaces daily if used, I scrub the toilets the second they don't look sparkling (to prevent gross buildup, maybe every 10 days, there are no stand-pee-ers in this house spraying piss everywhere lol), my Roomba runs every 2 days to get most dust on the floor that normally would get kicked back up, and I pay for some house cleaners to come once a month to get what I missed and do a better job at it.

I have 2 kids under 3…

laughs maniacally

A plan. Clean all floors weekly.

Clean as you go. When you’re done with food, wash the plate or put it in the dishwasher. When you’re done with your shower, take yesterdays dirty clothes downstairs and put them in the washing machine. After you are done dressing in the morning, wipe down the bathroom sink etc with the hand towel. Buy a roomba and set it loose before you leave for work.

I splurged on a Bissell cross wave pet and I can’t believe how amazing it really is. I wish I would have gotten the cordless version but it really has changed how often and easy it is to keep our floors clean!

I also really try to do a “closing shift” every night. And even if I have dishes in the sink, they have all been rinsed.

I wipe down the surfaces in the half bath every time I use it.

And I wipe the hand rails and base boards once every couple of months. We have 4 kids so there is always some kind of “mess” but I’ve gotten so much better about keeping up with the house. And I don’t beat myself up when I skip a day or two.

Smaller houses tend to be better for this, generally. Cut down on all the stupid useless crap you own that you only use like once every 3 years, it's not worth it to keep it sitting around. Buy and sell everything on craigslist, and rent the rest of what you might need. Maybe look into a storage shed or something, or dedicate a portion of your house to this, a room, something like this. Most people have a garage, I think. Pawn stuff off on everyone around you, call them when you need it, and then that's a good opportunity to socialize. The same goes for "makerspaces" or whatever. Get out of your house more.

Work from the top down, start in an area with your fans, cobwebs, whatever, then work down to the pictures and higher shelves, the windows, lower shelves, tables, then hit your walls and baseboards, and then, after all that's done, do the floors.

Remove clutter and little aesthetic baubles on shelves where dust and hair and crap might accumulate, unless you're actively using the things in that space, or frequently moving stuff around in that area. It also pays to be conscious of how airflow moves throughout your house and how dust settles. It always tends to be the corners, but then corners also tend to be the deadzones where people put things anyways. If you can turn this on it's head, and keep things away from the walls and corners more, that's probably a decent idea, and could also help you open up your house more. If you can't do that, you could look into like, these triangular dust guards they make for the corners of things, especially stairs, though those are mostly for sweeping, and I think dust might end up sticking to them regardless. The best solution for most people is probably just to go in the complete opposite direction, and get some big sealed corner cabinets with actual doors, instead of just having a bunch of open shelves everywhere.

Make sure you always remove your shoes when you come in from outside, and if you're especially dirty, your outerwear. It's easier to clean this all in one location by the door. Cats and dogs and all your other pets also shed a ton which can suck really bad and get on everything. I really like having pets, but god damn it can get pretty nasty. I would probably not do it all over again if I had the choice. Maybe look for breeds that don't shed as much. Or just brush your pets maybe more than daily, that might also help.

Also, invest in a good stick vacuum, don't get one of those huge corded garbage vacuums, or those ones that roll around and have the tube, those also suck and are awful. Also a good spray mop with the bottom that sticks to the cloth pad, and not like a normal stupid mop with a bucket or whatever, because those suck.

Yeah. Do all that, revolve your life around just cleaning and maintaining the shit that you own, and then you can probably get away with like an hour maybe once or twice a week for your whole house. How fulfilling!

I keep up on my hvac air filters to help with dust, and have a no shoes in the house rule.