I love surveys and questionnaires. Always have. I'm not sure why, but give me a bunch of questions to answer and I'm in hog heaven. I took a survey yesterday that asked "How often do you (or someone else) thoroughly clean your house?" It didn't explain what "thoroughly clean your house" means, and I assume it means different things to different people.
For me, "thoroughly clean your house" would include the following:
-- Change sheets
-- Vaccuum all rooms, including stairs
-- Wash floors
-- Dust furniture
-- Windex windows and mirrors as needed
-- Wipe down kitchen counters, clean kitchen sink
-- Clean bathrooms (toilet, sink, tub, shower, tile)
-- Empty all trash
-- Wipe down baseboards and windowsills
Now, I don't do all these in one day. I spread things out throughout the week. I tend to "thoroughly" clean the upstairs (4 bedrooms, 2 full baths) one day, and the downstairs (dining room, office, kitchen, family room, laundry room, half bath)on another. Trash gets emptied throughout the house on Wednesday (trash pick up day is Thursday). I answered that I "thoroughly clean my house" once a week, and that was the answer of 23% of the 86,000+ people who responded.
But 7% of those 86,000 answered that they NEVER thoroughly clean their house!
This floored me (and luckily, my floor is clean). How is it possible for someone to NEVER clean their house? They can't respond "because Mom cleans it" or "because my wife cleans it" because the question was "How often do you OR SOMEONE ELSE thoroughly clean your house?"
The population of the U.S. is 304,459,438. Let's assume there are 5 people per household. That's sixty million plus households in the U.S. If this survey response is true, that means there are SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND homes in the U.S. that are never cleaned!
I'm hoping people just think they never "thoroughly clean" their home because maybe they don't dust the top of the doors as often as they should or maybe they don't move the book-laden bookcases away from the wall and dust behind them as often as they think they should.
I'd love to know what "thoroughly clean your house" means to you, and how often you do it! I put up a poll in the right-hand column of my blog page for you to answer the "how often" question -- and leave comments about what "thoroughly clean your house" means to you -- or respond on your own blog and leave me a link!
Jun 28, 2008
Take my Poll: How often do you thoroughly clean your house?
I love surveys and questionnaires. Always have. I'm not sure why, but give me a bunch of questions to answer and I'm in hog heaven. I took a survey yesterday that asked "How often do you (or someone else) thoroughly clean your house?" It didn't explain what "thoroughly clean your house" means, and I assume it means different things to different people.
For me, "thoroughly clean your house" would include the following:
-- Change sheets
-- Vaccuum all rooms, including stairs
-- Wash floors
-- Dust furniture
-- Windex windows and mirrors as needed
-- Wipe down kitchen counters, clean kitchen sink
-- Clean bathrooms (toilet, sink, tub, shower, tile)
-- Empty all trash
-- Wipe down baseboards and windowsills
Now, I don't do all these in one day. I spread things out throughout the week. I tend to "thoroughly" clean the upstairs (4 bedrooms, 2 full baths) one day, and the downstairs (dining room, office, kitchen, family room, laundry room, half bath)on another. Trash gets emptied throughout the house on Wednesday (trash pick up day is Thursday). I answered that I "thoroughly clean my house" once a week, and that was the answer of 23% of the 86,000+ people who responded.
But 7% of those 86,000 answered that they NEVER thoroughly clean their house!
This floored me (and luckily, my floor is clean). How is it possible for someone to NEVER clean their house? They can't respond "because Mom cleans it" or "because my wife cleans it" because the question was "How often do you OR SOMEONE ELSE thoroughly clean your house?"
The population of the U.S. is 304,459,438. Let's assume there are 5 people per household. That's sixty million plus households in the U.S. If this survey response is true, that means there are SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND homes in the U.S. that are never cleaned!
I'm hoping people just think they never "thoroughly clean" their home because maybe they don't dust the top of the doors as often as they should or maybe they don't move the book-laden bookcases away from the wall and dust behind them as often as they think they should.
I'd love to know what "thoroughly clean your house" means to you, and how often you do it! I put up a poll in the right-hand column of my blog page for you to answer the "how often" question -- and leave comments about what "thoroughly clean your house" means to you -- or respond on your own blog and leave me a link!
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2 comments:
For me, thoroughly cleaning the house would mean everything that you said except for wiping down the baseboards.
I would prefer to consider the cleaning taking down all knick-knacks and dusting everything thoroughly, but I'm not going to consider that part of the "thorough" cleaning because I don't do that nearly as often as I'd like! But if I had my preference, I would dust better and more often.
For everything all at once, I would say every three weeks. In between the vacuum is run here and there, the bathroom sink and toilets are cleaned, etc., but I don't scrub things down every week or even every other week. With both of us working all day, I guess I don't feel like it gets all that dirty, and I'm definitely less inclined to want to do a 5-hour cleaning each weekend!
I voted twice a month, though I can say that I have never cleaned a baseboard. It has never occurred to me to do it. I'm looking at them now, and I'm not inspired to do so. I guess I'm just a dirty baseboards kind of girl. :-)
And twice a month is really just an average. For a few months, I'll clean every week. Then it will be less often. After DD was born in February, I went 5 weeks without cleaning. It just didn't hit my radar. DH gets irritated with my sporadic cleaning, but until he starts doing it himself . . . too bad!
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