How to deep clean your house room by room – and everything you’ll need

'There are more different opinions on how best to clean your windows than you can shake a squeegee at,' writes Tucker - Andrew Crowley

A psychologist would have a field day over my urge to deep clean my house but there is something therapeutic and comforting about the sheen of a buffed sink or the sparkle of a clear window. TikTok and Instagram accounts are devoted to rainbow douching your lavatory and YouTube tutorials explain the penetrating powers of bicarbonate of soda on all kinds of muck. But it’s true that clutter is bad for our heads – research shows it can increase anxiety and our ability to focus – while living in a clean environment gives us a sense of control and accomplishment, lowering stress and boosting quality sleep. And while I am finicky enough to believe it’s normal to baby oil my stainless-steel fridge door (it becomes super shiny), I am sure there are a multitude of cleaning tips I have yet to discover. I asked the experts and was astounded at what I discovered.

Kitchen

What you need

products - kitchen

• Disinfectant spray or liquid
• Extendable microfibre duster (for cobwebs)
• Bicarbonate of soda
• Scourer/sponge/cleaning cloths
• Toothbrush for cleaning around taps and in crevices
• White vinegar

Method

Like most families, the kitchen is the centre of my home. It’s where life gathers and dirt, so much dirt, accumulates. Where to start? Nicola Lewis, an expert in decluttering and founder of This Girl Can Organise (@thisgirlcanorganise), recommends looking upwards (I spot a dangling cobweb above my cabinets) and looking down into the depths. “We see what’s in front of our faces,” she says, “And that gets regularly sorted. But if you peer into the furthest corners, you’ll really find the muck.”

I get down on all fours and follow a trail of fluff and dust along a skirting board until it disappears behind my washing machine. Intrigued, I pull the machine out of its nook and discover a tumbleweed of hairs and fabric lint, a shrivelled lump of what appears to be fossilised chicken scraps and a few deceased ants. Out comes the Astonish Germ Clear Disinfectant spray. It’s a lesson to me that other big appliances and pieces of furniture might need to be shifted. There is a whole continent of grease at the back of the cooker, and a sideboard in my living room shrouds almost an inch of dirt at its rear.

A surprising amount of cleaning experts I interview veer towards the old-fashioned option of mixing equal parts of water and distilled white vinegar to spruce up their home. If the sour aroma bothers you (it disappears fairly quickly), add a few drops of essential oil. It worked a treat cleaning the interior of my fridge, my cutting boards along the worktops (don’t use it on granite or marble; it will etch the stone) and even on top of my cupboards where sticky grease had been enjoying a hiatus for months.

I annihilate seemingly years of filth from the newly exposed rear of the cooker. The cleaning influencer Sophie Hinchliffe, aka Mrs Hinch (@mrshinchhome), recommends The Pink Stuff (a mild abrasive paste) and a scourer, others suggest the more eco-friendly bicarbonate of soda. The secret to both is plenty of friction to remove stubborn spots. Next, I turn to the smaller stuff. My cutlery drawer is wiped clear of corner crumbs (it’s a mystery where they come from; the silverware is always put away spotless), the kettle is descaled, the storage cupboards are swabbed and purged of out-of-date Tabasco bottles and lidless plastic containers, the sink is doused in a splash of water and vinegar, the plughole is cleared of scum with a couple of tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar (leave for 30 minutes, then pour boiling water down it. Repeat if necessary), and the toaster is shaken to within an inch of its life to remove old clumps of Hovis, while the scrap-collecting tray at the bottom is washed and dried before replacing.

Then, although my pedal bin is regularly emptied, I decide to do something significant about its inexplicit but lingering smell of fetid veg, somewhat like the breath of an ageing rabbit. I take the bin into the garden and spray it with disinfectant. With a soft sponge I give it a vigorous rub down, then use my hose to blast it with clean water. One of Mrs Hinch’s favourite products is Zoflora concentrated disinfectant. She endorses pouring a cap of neat Zoflora onto dry kitchen roll and leaving it in the bottom of your bin before you add a liner. I try it and my kitchen smells like Sunshine Escape for days.

Living area

What you need

cleaning products - kitchen

• Toothbrush/cotton bud
• Shaving foam
• Carpet cleaning brush
• Microfibre cloth
• Soapy water
• Vacuum cleaner with soft head attachment

I have two dogs, Nelly and Diddy; mother and daughter. I love them with an unconditional passion – except for when they come bounding in from the garden and scattershot muddy paw prints everywhere. Lily McBane, a housekeeper for a wealthy banker and his family living in north London, tells me that the dogs in her care must wear special socks before they re-enter the house after a walk! And Hugo Pena, the general manager at the Bryanston luxury apartments near Marble Arch, says residents’ dogs are regularly towel-dried by a team member after walks in the rain. I’m not that fastidious but I realise my white-painted floorboards are looking pretty grim. Lily McBane says her team uses wooden barbecue skewers to clean between awkward cracks, so I try that as a way of removing decades of heaven-knows-what. Mine is a fairly big living room and after floorboard 10 I get bored. Surely life holds more excitement than a crack cleanse?

McBane also reveals that her workers get rid of dust from delicate ornaments and light fittings with a sable artist’s brush. I’d rather watch spore formation in a petri dish but I can see the worth in a toothbrush (try the long, thin interspace ones) or a cotton bud to get into tricky places. The Victorian window ledges in my house are a trap for black mould caused by condensation, and I’m as satisfied as a sale shopper on New Year’s day when I use a small amount of soapy water and said toothbrush to dislodge the build-up from the corners. Oh, and I have a lot of pictures on my walls. On inspection, they are surprisingly grubby. McBane advises using a damp microfibre cloth (no chemicals) to wipe the glass and the frames, buffing them afterwards with a dry one.

Onwards, I decide to move the hefty stuff – TV, cupboards, sofa – to sanitise behind and underneath. Nicola Morgan, previously a crew member on superyachts for seven years, now runs her own crew recruiting business, Wilson Halligan. She says, “In my role as head crew, I had to really look for the dirt. Each section had to be spotlessly clean. We were told to move everything, never to clean around it. I’d put all the moveable furniture, even the ornaments, into the centre of the room, clean meticulously, then put it back. A soft vacuum head was essential for removing dust from curtains, surfaces, even lights.”

Finally, the living room rug. Apologies for vilifying the dogs, but the rug has a few suspect stains on it. I’m sure Nelly threw up after gorging on leftover shepherd’s pie last week. Cleaning expert Iwan Carrington from BBC’s Sort Your Life Out recommends using shaving foam on carpet stains. I’m sceptical but, miraculously, it works! Squirt it on, leave for 15 minutes and scrub off with a carpet brush. The dogs are redeemed.

Bathroom 

What you need

deep clean bathroom products

• Disinfectant spray
• Limescale remover
• Vinegar, lemon and water mix
• Toothbrush
• Mould spray

To my mind, the trickiest room in the house. A festering box of potential limescale, sludge and mould. Paul Whiteson, a director at Quest Property Services in London, says, “We use the same end-of-tenancy cleaning company for all our rental properties and they say the biggest problem with bathrooms is built-up mould and limescale. If a bathroom isn’t well ventilated, mould will develop on ceilings, in tile grout and on the silicone sealant around baths and shower trays. Limescale affects stainless steel taps and shower heads, and builds up in the ceramic toilet bowl below the water level. There are plenty of commercial cleaning products to sort out loos, but pouring white vinegar into the bowl and leaving overnight works well.”

My bathroom struggles with limescale because the water is so hard where I live. I try influencer Armen Adamjan’s (@creative_explained) tip of filling a plastic zip-lock bag with white vinegar and attaching it over the taps and shower head for an hour. It works effectively but for the really caked-on stuff I revert to my local hardware’s endorsement of Kilrock gel limescale remover. The wall tiles are sprayed with Astonish Mould and Mildew Spray, and I scrub the grout until my arms ache using a toothbrush usually designed for dentures – it has two brushes, one very stiff, and gets the job done. The silicone sealant around my bath or shower has seen better days and has a fair bit of mould embedded in it. Neat bleach on a toothbrush mostly gets rid of it. But it might be time for a glam up with some new sealant.

The shower screen is the bane of my life. Its fold-back glass doors manufacture endless sludge, and I am continually poking its fittings with a fine toothbrush to dislodge the gunk. It’s an annoying but crucial weekly ritual of mine. The other place that propagates slurry is my toothbrush holder. It gets a hearty squirt of disinfectant and a sloosh every few days. FYI, my current favourite bathroom product is Marks & Spencer’s Shower Shine. Use after every showering – the watermint and cedar scent is gorgeous, and more than any other brand I’ve used, it does what it says on the bottle. And here’s an easy but effective tip from Nicola Lewis: “Buy one of those inexpensive plughole hair catchers. It will save you a lot of digging around in the pipe for mucky, fallen-out hair.”

Loos – however fussy you might be – are festering lumps of ceramic. Lakeland sell an inexpensive Sonic Brush, a battery-operated cleaning brush with four different attachments for those of us who don’t want to get our hands in the bowl. It will also reach into the fixtures (dig around the grotty screws and hinges at the back of the loo seat where bacteria thrives) and below the rim.

Bedroom 

What you need

bedroom cleaning products

• Damp cleaning cloth
• Radiator brush
• Bicarbonate of soda
• Vacuum cleaner

My beloved kingsize bed dominates the room and demands my attention. When was the last time I moved it? Probably when Boris resigned as PM. I drag it over to one side and almost start laughing at the puffs of dust which soar from the carpet as I vacuum.

Mrs Hinch advises to strip beds down to their naked selves, and Nicola Lewis says she changes her linen every week, including the mattress protector. “I leave the mattress free for about an hour to air with the windows open, then I vacuum it to remove dead skin cells and dust mites. This is my routine all year round, regardless of the weather.” Mrs Hinch also suggests using a flour sieve to shake bicarbonate of soda evenly over the mattress to remove any odours. The bottom layer now replenished, I swoosh and plump the duvet, adding a freshly ironed white linen set. My bed is so spruced and fluffy it looks like an oversized meringue. I don’t know whether to lie in it or eat it.

Dust seems to be a thing in my bedroom. It’s everywhere. So I wipe down the bedside cabinets and skirting boards with a damp cloth, then do the same on the bottoms of my built-in wardrobes where shoes, bags and discarded belts are coated in enough of the stuff to resemble the snow-capped peaks of Everest. Warm water should be enough for cleaning these areas but any scuff marks on the skirtings can be removed with a little cream cleanser, such as Cif. If there is a ton of dust, keep rinsing out your cloth so you get a continual fresh swipe. Lastly, I check my radiator which seems to conceal a wealth of ancient fuzz wedged in its metal casing. McBane tells me that one of the most efficient contraptions known to man is the humble radiator brush. You can buy them for under a tenner and they are almost magical in their ability to reach the most impenetrable of places. I want to marry mine.

Hallway 

What you need 

Hallway products

• Saucepan lid
• Cleaning cloth
• Cotton buds
• Baking powder and vinegar mix
• Vacuum cleaner

What with all the rain lately and the fact I live near a park, mud is almost a permanent fixture in my hallway. I have a shoes-off-at-the-door policy, but the outside still intrudes. The stair carpet gets a lot of tread so I’m intrigued by this concoction from Armen Adamjan. He says to mix baking powder, liquid soap, white vinegar, salt and lemon juice in a bowl and then dip a cleaning cloth in the frothy mixture. Squeeze out the excess and wrap the cloth around a saucepan lid with a handle and use it as a buffer to spruce carpets and sofas. I try it and my white cloth soon turns a soap-dodging shade of over-chewed chewing gum. Note to self: be much stricter about shoe-wearing upstairs.

I spend an interminable amount of time cleaning the well-trafficked depths of the hallway crannies. I get through almost a box of earbuds and find a balled-up sock that my husband lost three weeks ago. I wonder if I should leave it there as a test to see if he really does walk around with his eyes shut. The seemingly endless amount of pervasive dirt makes me want to bite fanatically into my scouring sponge. Very bad cleaning attitude.

Office

What you need

office products

• Disinfectant spray
• Window blind cleaning tool
• Microfibre cloth
• Post-it pad
• Vacuum cleaner with soft head attachment

Apparently, there are more germs on your typical computer keyboard than a toilet seat. Iwan Carrington offers his smart hack for removing detritus – poke the sticky side of a Post-it note down the key pads to remove those minuscule remnants of this month’s lunch! The man’s a genius.

My office is drowning in paperwork which seems to reproduce on a daily basis. The dust underneath the tower of A4 is incredible but a quick vacuum picks up the worst, and a spritz of disinfectant and a wipe down with a microfibre cloth is beyond rewarding. I extend my attention to the light switches and plug sockets which, in this room, are grubbier than most. A rub with a slightly damp cloth – we’ve got electrics here – sorts the problem.

The dopamine release ramps up as I discover the joys of a window blind cleaning tool (Amazon). First spritz the blinds on one side with a water and vinegar mix, then glide the tool over each section to remove dirt. Turn the blinds and repeat (it’s not a quick process). Tip: if really grimy, vacuum first with a soft brush head; some folks like to wipe with a tumble dryer sheet because its anti-static technology collects the dust.

Windows

What you need

Deep Clean - Window

• Commercial window spray
• Squeegee/scraper
• Vinegar and water

There are more different opinions on how best to clean your windows than you can shake a squeegee at. Some folk opt for just newspaper and water, others favour vinegar and water, many go for a scraper and water, or a commercial window spray. To achieve the ultimate shine, the best tip came from Wilson Halligan: “After cleaning your windows, try turning off the lights at night and shutting the doors, and using a torch or your phone to check for any smears you’ve missed.”

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