Vacuuming is an important part of any household’s cleaning routine. It is just as essential as any other type of cleaning in the home. However, the challenge is how often the vacuuming should be done.
There is no universality to this because it varies from household to household. How often you should vacuum your house depends on your living situation.
That includes the size of your family and home, as well as other factors that have to be taken into account, such as health and hygiene, before determining a cleaning interval.
This article will give you a complete guide on how often you should vacuum your house so that you can figure out the best cleaning schedule that you can adopt. Continue reading for more information on the subject.
In this post we will cover:
- The Importance of Vacuuming
- How Often Should you Vacuum your House?
- Factors to consider before deciding on a vacuuming interval
- How should I clean different types of flooring?
- What happens if I never vacuum?
The Importance of Vacuuming
The main reason for vacuuming is to maintain a clean and sanitary environment, and it is a quick and easy way to clean. Vacuuming benefits you in the following ways:
Reducing lint and Dirt
Vacuuming helps to reduce lint and dust buildup, which can make you sick or trigger allergies. Particles can easily become trapped in hard floors and carpet fibers.
Regular vacuuming will get rid of them, ensuring that particle buildup is kept to a minimum. Ensure that your vacuum has a sound system of filtration and adequate suction.
Getting rid of odors
Vacuuming eliminates foul odors from your environment that may have been caused by unattended spills, old food, or pets. Once some odors have become embedded in the carpet fiber, they are difficult to remove, leaving you with no choice but to throw the carpet away.
Vacuuming removes odors from the surface of carpets. Modern vacuum cleaners have a variety of cleaning options, including the ability to eliminate odors.
Increased carpet lifespan
Vacuuming is one of the best ways to clean carpets and rugs and the most convenient way to maintain them. When you vacuum regularly, you remove dirt and soil that can damage the fibers of your carpet and shorten its life.
When you extend your carpet’s life, you are also extending its sustainability.
Health maintenance
Vacuuming eliminates any breeding ground for fungi and bacteria that can cause a variety of health issues for you and your family. Dirty surfaces can be hazardous for people who have asthma or allergies because the dirt can become airborne and cause serious harm.
Regular vacuuming, on the other hand, provides you with a clean and healthy environment because it cleans up various aspects of your home, such as floors, upholstery, and other above-floor surfaces.
How Often Should you Vacuum your House? A Complete Guide
Unless you vacuum every day, the frequency with which you vacuum your house is determined by a variety of factors, such as carpet flooring, children, and pets in the home. The general consensus is that you should vacuum your home at least twice a week.
If your home receives little traffic, you should vacuum once a week. However, the longer the intervals between cleanings, the more effort and time it will take to vacuum.
That is because more dirt, dust, and other particles will continue to accumulate over that time, and it will therefore take more cleaning time to handle. Modern vacuum cleaners are light and handy, making cleaning with them easier.
Here are some pointers to help you decide how frequently you should vacuum your house:
1. Carpets and rugs: If your house has carpets, you should vacuum frequently. The frequency is determined by the type of carpet and the amount of traffic it gets.
The traffic lanes in high traffic areas must be vacuumed daily, and the entire area must be vacuumed twice a week. The traffic lane of low-traffic areas is cleaned twice a week, and the entire area is cleaned once.
For rooms that are seldom used, a bi-weekly session of vacuuming is enough. Vacuuming your carpet frequently and thoroughly is an important step in caring for it. Frequent vacuuming prevents soil from penetrating beneath the carpet pile surface.
When soil reaches this area, it will be difficult to remove and will damage the fibers of the carpet.
2. Machine quality: Invest in the best affordable vacuum cleaner for you if you wish to extend the life of the floors in your home. A cheap unit will only remove surface dirt. If you have carpet, purchase a machine capable of removing dirt under the fibers.
An important feature is an adjustable height because it allows you to vacuum on various floor types. When you have a powerful machine, vacuuming every week is enough.
3. Pets: If you have pets, consider vacuuming daily to get rid of the hair shed by your pets as well as the dust and dirt brought in by them. The love for your pets should also extend to vacuuming their messes too.
Pets shed and drop dander and fleas, which can cause or exacerbate diseases and allergies. Pets that go outside can carry bacteria like Salmonellosis or Cyclospora, which can cause vomiting, headaches, infections, and diarrhea.
If you cannot find time to vacuum every day, concentrate on cleaning the furniture and rooms where your pets spend the majority of their time. You should also think about investing in the best robot vacuum to do the cleaning.
4. Hard floors: Hard floors must be cleaned on a weekly basis. Unless you live in a dusty area, bring a lot of sand or dirt into your home, or have pets, hard floors do not attract a lot of dust and dirt.
Dander, dust, and other allergens, on the other hand, can find their way into the cracks between the floorboards. As a result, unless it is a rarely used room, do not wait too long before vacuuming the hard floor.
5. Room usage: The frequency of cleaning a room depends on the amount of traffic it gets. Spaces with moderate traffic, such as home offices and bedrooms, stay cleaner for longer and should be cleaned once a week.
High traffic areas, such as the kitchen, mudrooms, and children’s playrooms, should be vacuumed every few days. The room collects dirt more quickly, hence the need for the vacuuming interval.
Since they receive little traffic, spaces that are rarely used, such as formal dining rooms and guest rooms, should be cleaned on a biweekly basis.
Conclusion
Vacuuming is an essential part of any household and should be done regularly. The frequency with which a home should be vacuumed is determined by several factors, including family size, children, pets, and rugs and carpets.
Vacuuming is important because it removes lint and dust, extends the life of your carpet, and eliminates odors. It also prevents the buildup of dirt, debris, dust, and foul odors, which can be difficult to remove if left unattended.
FAQs
Factors to consider before deciding on a vacuuming interval
1. Vacuum cleaner: You can decide how often you should vacuum your house depending on the vacuum cleaner that you have at home. A unit with an efficient system of filtration and a powerful motor will be great at cleaning meaning less frequency.
2. Rugs and carpets: If you have rugs around your home, then you have to vacuum them two times a week. Rugs and carpets absorb grime and accumulate bacteria when they cover tiled floors or hardwood.
3. Floor-type: The flooring of your home is an essential factor when it comes to vacuuming. Different floors require different frequencies of cleaning. Carpeted floors require to be cleaned in smaller intervals since their fibers attract dust and dirt particles easily.
Hard floors, on the other hand, require to be vacuumed twice a week because they do not hold dust and bacteria. The texture of some of the floors, such as hardwood floors, keeps bacteria away, making your cleaning easier.
However, vacuuming is still essential since dust can get stuck between floorboards.
4. Pets: When you have pets, the mess gets a little over the top because of the constant shedding of the pets. If you are a pet person, your home should be vacuumed daily. Pets also bring a lot of dust and dirt into the house with their paws.
How should I clean different types of flooring?
Most homes have various types of floors, and it is critical to understand how to clean each surface. That can be difficult at times, but this guide will help you if your home has different types of flooring.
The first step in cleaning any type of flooring is to remove any stains and keep it clean by giving it a light cleaning regularly, using doormats, and removing your shoes at the door. The habits will make it easier to deep clean your floors when the time comes.
1. Cleaning concrete flooring
Concrete floors are usually found in garages and they are maintained by an occasional dry sweep, followed by pressured washer or water, and a broom made of hard bristles to remove surface dirt.
Paint stain on the concrete floor is removed by a paint stripper and ensure that you use as much as that used on wood. Oil-based paint is removed using an absorbent such as Pour-N-Restore. Apply it on the stain, give it time to dry, and then sweep.
2. Tile flooring
Tiled flooring should be cleaned weekly. Begin by sweeping or vacuuming any dirt first. Then clean the tiled floor with a microfiber cloth or wet mop using a tile and grout-friendly cleaner.
Ensure that the cleaner is correctly diluted so that no residue will be left on your tile and, where necessary, make a second pass with water. Make sure that the mop you are using is clean.
Use a scrub brush or a toothbrush to remove stained grout with a baking soda and hydrogen peroxide combination or a grout-specific cleaner.
3. Carpet flooring
Carpet flooring should be cleaned more frequently in high traffic areas and once a week in low traffic areas. Make sure you invest in a vacuum cleaner that is designed to clean the specific type of carpet you have.
Any stains should be removed as soon as they appear. First, use only water by damping and blotting your carpet repeatedly with a clean terry cloth towel. If stains are addressed as soon as possible, the process can remove them without leaving a chemical residue.
You should deep clean the carpet flooring once a year, which you can do by hiring a professional carpet cleaning company. You can also rent a steam cleaner and do it by yourself.
4. Vinyl flooring
The daily cleaning of this kind of flooring requires you to sweep or vacuum dirt and dust first. Then clean the floor with a microfiber cloth or wet mop using a vinyl-specific cleaner.
Chemical cleaners that are not meant for vinyl floors will remove the durable coating of the floor, and even stain or discolor the floor over time. Use rubbing alcohol to remove tough stains.
5. Hardwood flooring
Daily cleaning of the floor requires you to sweep or vacuum the hardwood floor. Then clean with a microfiber cloth or wet mop using a natural floor cleaner. Harsh chemicals should be avoided because they will wear at the hardwood’s finish with time.
A natural hardwood cleaner can be made at home by mixing half a cup of vinegar with a gallon of water. If the wood flooring has gaps between boards, maintain its durability by filling the holes with wood filler, then sand and refinish the spots.
The filling, sanding, and refinishing will repair the hardwood floor and get rid of tiny dirt collectors.
What happens if I never vacuum?
Vacuuming is a cleaning task that you may dislike or even avoid. When you do not vacuum, your home appears dirty, messy, uncluttered, and unappealing. However, if you do not vacuum, the following may occur in your home:
1. It will serve as a breeding ground for dust mites, their body parts, and feces, which are one of the most common allergy triggers. The creatures feed on human cells, and if you have a dust allergy, having more termites in your home will aggravate the situation.
Regular vacuuming will not eliminate all termites, but it will significantly reduce their population and help in relieving allergies.
2. The carpet will get stained, dull, and worn because the dirt in it will also act like a razor blade, which will continuously cut the fibers when the carpet is walked on. The bacterial buildup can cause a permanent musty smell in your home and trigger allergies.
You will have to replace your carpet more frequently because the dirt buildup will become grounded into the fibers of the carpet, making it difficult to vacuum. When this happens, the carpet will be damaged by constant grinding as people work over it.
3. Mold will spread around your home and, if untreated, will become a nightmare. Mold spreads quickly and can cause health problems. The long-term solution to mold issues is a careful analysis of the reasons why your home is excessively damp.
Also, consider the short-term steps to reducing its spread. Vacuuming gets rid of mold because when you vacuum, the machine will suck up dormant spores from upholstery and carpet.
4. Bed bugs have a chance of infiltrating your bedroom. Bed bugs are parasites that feed on human blood and prefer to live in or around the bedding. Though the parasites are not dangerous, they are not pleasant to sleep with and can cause allergic reactions.
Vacuuming your bed and mattress regularly will help to reduce the likelihood of bed bug infestation.
