How to spring clean your whole house in a weekend

You can spring clean a whole house in a weekend with a plan: spend day one decluttering and prepping, and day two deep cleaning room by room, top to bottom. Do the dry, dusty jobs before the wet ones, work one room at a time so you are not going in circles, and leave the big exterior jobs to a professional. With the work split sensibly across two days, even a full house is achievable.

Before the weekend: prep

A little prep makes the weekend flow. Stock up on the products and cloths you need, line up bin bags and boxes for decluttering, and decide your room order. Going in with a plan is the difference between a productive weekend and an exhausting, half-finished one.

Day one: declutter and prep

You cannot deep clean around clutter, so day one clears the decks:

• Go room by room, sorting into keep, donate, sell and bin.
• Clear surfaces, worktops and floors so day two is pure cleaning.
• Strip beds and get laundry and washable soft furnishings going.
• Tackle one or two "project" areas, a wardrobe, the under-stairs, a junk drawer.

See decluttering before a clean for a faster approach.

Day two: deep clean room by room

With everything clear, work through the house. Always go top to bottom, cobwebs and light fittings, then surfaces, then floors, and finish each room before moving on.

• Kitchen: inside the oven and fridge, descale, cupboard fronts, then floor.
• Bathrooms: descale and sanitise, glass, then floor, see cleaning a bathroom like a pro.
• Bedrooms and living areas: dust everything including skirting and fittings, vacuum under furniture, fresh bedding.
• Windows: clean the inside glass and sills to let the spring light in.

Dry jobs before wet jobs

A simple rule that saves re-doing work: do all the dusting and dry tasks before you start mopping and wet cleaning. Dust falls downward, so if you mop first then dust, you will be cleaning the floor twice. Top to bottom, dry to wet, is the efficient order.

What to leave to the professionals

Some spring jobs are not weekend-friendly and will swallow your time or pose a risk:

• Exterior windows, gutters and patios, see window cleaning, gutter cleaning and driveway and patio cleaning.
• Carpet and upholstery deep cleaning.
• The whole interior deep clean itself, if you would rather have your weekend.

Or let us do the spring clean

If a weekend of cleaning is not how you want to spend your spring, we will do it for you. Our domestic deep cleaning covers Derby and Derbyshire, and we can pair the interior with exterior window, gutter and patio work so the whole property is spring-fresh in one go.