The purpose of a spring clean is to deal with the annual jobs: the ones that never fit into a weekly routine but make a visible difference when they are finally done. Windows, soft furnishings, appliance interiors, high-level dust and the accumulated grime around edges and frames.
The most useful thing you can do is sequence it. Start anything that needs soaking or dwell time, work from the top of each room down, and leave floors until last so nothing lands on them afterwards.
The short version
- One room at a time, finished properly, beats a whole-house sweep
- Declutter before cleaning or you clean around obstacles
- Top down, floors last, wet work before dry in each room
- Soft furnishings hold more dust than hard surfaces
- Book carpets and upholstery for the end of the process
Before you start
Clear first. Bagging up what is leaving the house before you clean saves more time than any product, because every item on a surface is an extra action for every future clean.
Then set anything slow going: oven treatment, limescale on shower glass, a filter soaking in the sink. Those jobs work while you do something else.
Kitchen
The kitchen absorbs the most time, so it usually pays to do it first while you have energy. Work through the cupboard interiors, then appliances, then surfaces, then floors.
- Empty and wipe cupboard and drawer interiors, check dates on food
- Oven, hob, extractor filter and the top of wall units
- Fridge and freezer interiors, seals and drip channel
- Kettle and washing machine descale, plus the machine door gasket
- Bin interiors, then the floor and its edges
Bathrooms
Bathrooms are mainly a limescale and mould problem, both of which need contact time rather than force. Apply treatments, leave them, come back.
- Descale taps, shower heads, screens and tiling
- Treat grout and silicone, and note any seals that need replacing
- Clean extractor grille and check it is actually pulling air
- Wash bath mats, shower curtains and towels on a hot wash
Living areas and bedrooms
These rooms are mostly dust, and dust lives higher up than people clean. Light fittings, curtain tops, picture frames, shelf tops and the tops of doors are the usual culprits.
Soft furnishings matter more than hard surfaces here. Mattresses, sofas and curtains hold dust and skin cells, and vacuuming them properly makes a real difference to how a room smells.
- High-level dust: lights, cornices, tops of wardrobes and doors
- Curtains and blinds, washed or vacuumed as appropriate
- Mattress vacuum and turn, wash pillows and mattress protectors
- Vacuum under and behind furniture, not just around it
- Skirtings, radiators and behind radiators
Windows, doors and the outside edge
Interior glass, frames, sills and the drainage channels in window frames all collect grime over winter. Clearing the small drain holes at the bottom of the frame prevents pooling and the mould that follows it.
Entrance matting is worth a proper clean or a replacement. It is the single item that keeps most soil out of the rest of the house, and a saturated mat stops working entirely.
Finish with carpets and upholstery
Leave carpets and soft furnishings until the end. Cleaning them first means high-level dust falls onto freshly cleaned fibre, and you have paid for work you have just undone.
This is also the point where it is worth deciding what to hand over. Carpet and upholstery cleaning is the part of a spring clean where professional equipment makes the largest difference, because domestic machines cannot recover enough moisture to rinse properly.
- Vacuum thoroughly first, slowly, in two directions
- Deal with spots before general cleaning so they are not set
- Ventilate well and allow proper drying time
- Consider protector on high-traffic areas afterwards