How Often Should You Vacuum?
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Wondering how often should you vacuum? The answer may surprise you. It depends.
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The house we live in had brand new carpet when we moved in. What a treat!
Forget the fact that it’s practically white carpet, okay, very light beige. And a rental. Who does that?
Needless to say, we’ve tried hard to take good care of it. Well, as best as one can when you live in a busy household of eight people, six of them active children.
Daily vacuuming has been our first line of defense. Regular carpet cleaning has been the second. The question often comes up, however, daily vacuuming?
How Often Should You Vacuum?
Yes, daily.
A few summers ago, almost eight to be exact, I decided to instill some better cleaning habits in all of us and instituted the daily vacuuming of the living areas.
There are three carpeted areas in the downstairs, and so each of the big boys had to choose one area to vacuum every day. It’s amazing what a difference it made to the overall appearance of our home.
I’d read once that you should vacuum an area as many times per week as the number of people that regularly use that area.
So, for a bedroom for one person, a weekly vacuuming is sufficient. A room with two roomies should get a twice a week treatment.
Our main living areas? According to that formula, they should receive eight vacuumings a week!
Well, that ain’t happening. But, since that fateful summer day we’ve been able to swing a daily once over. It really doesn’t take very long to go over each area.
And, since it has to be vacuumed, all the junk has to be picked up off the floor, too! {Maniacal laughter from the Mama.}
We’ve hired the same carpet cleaner for many, many years, and he has agreed that the daily vacuuming has helped our carpet last this long. It’s cheap, renter’s carpet in beige, so there’s only so much you can do, but daily vacuuming has helped.
What kind of vacuum should you get?
For over 20 years, we’ve had an Oreck upright vacuum. The first one lasted us about 13 years. The second is almost seven years old and going strong. You can read my review of it here.
For a short time, we had Jarvis, a robotic vacuum. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as loyal to us as he was Ironman.
When we had hard floors, we loved the Shark Cordless Sweeper. It was so light even the toddlers could use it. You can read my review of it here.
How often do YOU vacuum at your house?
Originally published August 16, 2010. Updated January 31, 2018.
My main floor—living room, hall, landing, dining room and school room—all get vacuumed daily. I would love to say it is because we have an 11 month old, but truthfully, I think it just makes the house look cleaner.
The rest of the house is usually once a week. Washing floors is another story.
I have vacuumed at least once a day for 5 yrs and we had a little more shag in our carpet we bought that we expected. It has frayed it all. :O( I just wanted to mention, the length and type of yours will do great with daily vacuuming. Next house I will know what kind of carpet to get for a ‘high traffic’ family! lol
Blessings and hugs!! Rachael
Wow, I feel like a slacker! It’s only my husband and I living in our place. We both work full time and go lots of different places on evenings and weekends, so we aren’t really walking around in our house all the time. So, honestly, I vaccuum about once or twice a month (yes, month, not week) in our main living areas or just if I notice it getting dirty. It doesn’t help that we have an awful vaccuum cleaner, but I have horrible luck with vaccuum cleaners. I probably only vaccuum upstairs every other month.
I’ve started to vacuum our dining room daily and our living room every other day. To be honest, I rarely vacuum upstairs as we spend most of our days downstairs. The dining room with 2 toddlers is always needing to be vacuumed so I’ve just given up and given in to the need and started to vacuum daily.
Another trick is that I bought a dust buster that I let my 3 year old use to vacuum up the crumbs under the table after meals. She loves to help and it’s been helping so much!
I have a mix of hardwood and carpet throughout my house, but I still give both a good vacuum at least once a week. If I’m really feeling crazy, I do it twice a week. I think that “rule of thumb” suggestion sounds about right.
And I noticed the Oreck…don’t you just LOVE that vaccum! We have one and I adore it!
Gosh! I only vaccuum once a week!
We vacuum weekly, but I do feel we should be vacuuming more often. This post has inspired to at least add in some quick vacuumings between the mainly (detailed) weekly one. We just bought a Shark Navigator from Costco and love it. It seems to be doing a great job at a fraction of the cost of a Dyson, and there is a coupon out for Costco making them $30 off for the next few weeks.
I have carpet upstairs and hardwood downstairs. I vacuum the carpet once a week on Thursdays and I sweep every night after my boys go to bed. Its a bit aggravating to have to sweep everyday.
My goal is to vacuum every day but in reality this means about five times a week. BUT, most of that is our three cats. They call shed like crazy year round and we have a long haired one who tracks litter every where. I hate it. Don’t get me started on the food mess in the dinning room with our two boys.
I should clarify this only means the downstairs which takes six minutes. The upstairs gets done a few times a month at most. Since the baby gates went up the cats don’t spend as much time upstairs and the four y/o is too scared to play up there on his own. So we live on the ground floor.
Of course, I’m crazy enough that we own a Dyson pet roller ball vac. And we don’t have any carpet. I know it sounds crazy but it’s worth it.
I vacuum our living room and kitchen daily; those are the only rooms the dogs are allowed in. We have hard-wood floors. I use the hose attachment and clean-up the tumbleweeds. I vacuum the bedrooms and office once or twice a week.