Work Effort House Cleaning Costs

Based on world-wide university studies and government census results on work effort house cleaning costs - the average number of household hours per week spent on cleaning ranges around 22 hours per week per household. Since most of these studies are 3-5 years old, it can be safely assumed that most families were using the most common commercial chemical cleaning methods.

1. Popular Commercial Chemical Methods

Weekly Average - 22 hours/week

Yearly Average - 1144 hours/year

2. Commercial Eco-friendly Methods

The extra hour in house cleaning costs is accounted for by slightly greater work effort required for eco-friendly products, as they are not as strong. Also, by eliminating the use of the Swiffer floor cleaning system, more time is required for preparing, filling, emptying and re-filling buckets used for washing floors.

Weekly Average - 23 hours/week

Yearly Average - 1196 hours/year

3. Home-Made Cleaning Products

Extra time is required for mixing of cleaning solutions, as well as the fact that some tasks will now involve more than 1 step. In addition, increased work effort is required in some cases, as home-made solutions generally require more elbow grease.

Weekly Average - 25 hours/week

Yearly Average - 1300 hours/year

4. Non-Chemical Cleaning Methods

Time estimates are based on work effort studies completed in Sweden, Norway, the U.S. and Canada. Since these were all institutional studies, I did a proportional adjustment of a 66% reduction in time as compared to popular commercially available chemical methods.

High quality non-chemical products completely eliminate the need for the use of chemicals - which means no sprays to wipe, no residue to rinse, no solutions to dilute, and no bottles to pull out from under the cleaning closet. A particularly big time saving was the eliminated wait time - most chemical solutions are required to 'sit' on the surface for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes before you can wipe them up. With physics-based cleaning products, this is no longer required.

Weekly Average - 14.5 hours/week

Yearly Average - 754 hours/year

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