House Cleaning Statistics (2026): Time, Workload, and What Buyers Search

Quick answer: In 2025, Americans age 15 and over spent an average of 0.56 hours a day on housework, about 34 minutes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey. Only 36.1% of people did any housework on an average day, and those who did spent 1.55 hours on it. Women averaged 0.81 hours of housework a day, compared with 0.30 hours for men. In our own analysis of 1,366 Google search queries that showed Pro Housekeepers pages over 28 days, 48.1% were do-it-yourself cleaning questions and 8.6% were hire or cost searches, yet the hire and cost group earned 19.8% of the clicks.

This page puts those numbers in one place, with the source and method for each, so you can check them or cite them. It answers three questions: how much time people spend cleaning, how much work a professional regular clean and deep clean actually cover, and what people search for when they look for cleaning help. For prices, see our pricing page or the house cleaning pricing guide.

Method: where these numbers come from

Every statistic on this page comes from one of three sources.

1. BLS American Time Use Survey (ATUS), 2025 results. Released June 25, 2026 (USDL-26-1022). About 6,100 people were interviewed in 2025. Each person reports their activities for one day, and BLS publishes averages per day for the civilian population age 15 and over. We used Table 1 (by sex) and Table 2 (weekdays vs. weekends). BLS notes that no interviews were completed from October 1 to November 12, 2025, during a federal government shutdown, and that the effect on 2025 estimates cannot be measured. Minute and weekly figures on this page are our own arithmetic from the hours BLS publishes.
2. Pro Housekeepers checklist count. On October 30, 2026, we saved our live regular cleaning, deep cleaning, and move-in and move-out cleaning pages and counted the tasks listed in each checklist. On the regular checklist, each clause separated by a semicolon counts as one item. On the deep checklist, each sentence counts as one item. On the move-out page, each bullet under “Moving out” counts as one item. We also checked both checklists against a fixed list of 30 named surfaces and tasks (for example baseboards, range hood, window sills) and recorded which list mentions each one.
3. Pro Housekeepers Google Search Console sample. We exported the “Queries” report for prohousekeepers.com (web search, last 28 days, exported October 30, 2026). The file has 1,366 queries. We sorted each query into one group using fixed keyword rules, applied in order: brand (our name), starting a cleaning business, hire or cost (words like cost, price, near me, service, company, maid, cleaners, housekeeper), do-it-yourself or how-to (queries that start with how, what, can, does, or contain how to, tips, remove, get rid), checklist, and everything else (topic phrases such as “marble floor polishing” with no clear intent).

Limitations. The search data is one website’s Search Console sample. It’s not national search volume or national search share. Google leaves out rare and anonymized queries, so the query rows add up to 121 clicks, while the same export’s page report shows 353 clicks. The checklist counts describe what our pages say, not timed measurements of real visits. Counting rules change the totals: a long sentence and a short clause each count as one item.

Finding 1: The average American spends about 34 minutes a day on housework

BLS counts housework separately from cooking and kitchen cleanup, lawn care, and household management. In 2025, housework averaged 0.56 hours a day across everyone age 15 and over. That works out to about 34 minutes a day, or about 3.9 hours a week by our arithmetic. Most people don’t do housework every day: 36.1% did some on an average day. Among the people who did housework that day, the average was 1.55 hours.

Source: BLS ATUS 2025, Table 1.

Finding 2: Women do almost three times as much housework as men

Women averaged 0.81 hours of housework a day in 2025 and men averaged 0.30 hours, which is a ratio of 2.7 to 1. Women were also twice as likely to do any housework on a given day, 47.9% compared with 23.8% of men. For all household activities combined, 86.7% of women and 74.9% of men took part on an average day.

Finding 3: Housework moves to the weekend

On weekends and holidays, 39.6% of people did housework, compared with 34.7% on weekdays. Average housework time rose from 0.50 hours a day on weekdays to 0.70 hours on weekends and holidays. People who did housework on a weekend day spent 1.78 hours on it, compared with 1.44 hours on a weekday.

Source: BLS ATUS 2025, Table 2.

Finding 4: A deep clean names 15 surfaces that a regular clean does not

Our regular cleaning checklist lists 23 tasks across five groups: kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, living areas, and all rooms. Our deep cleaning checklist lists 12 tasks across four groups, but its tasks are longer and name more surfaces. When we checked both lists against the same 30 named surfaces and tasks, the regular checklist mentioned 15 and the deep checklist mentioned 26. Fifteen appear only on the deep list: baseboards, ceilings, corners of walls, under furniture and beds, inside the oven, range hood, stove drip pans, burner grates, control knobs, backsplash, descaling showerheads and taps, tiles, vanity, inside windows, and window sills.

The regular cleaning page also names five things that aren’t part of every regular visit: blinds, oven interiors, refrigerator interiors, ceilings, and walls. It describes a typical regular visit as “about 2 to 3 hours for many homes,” with size and condition making the difference. The deep cleaning page says a deep clean takes “significantly longer than a standard cleaning service” and doesn’t give a fixed time. If your home has not had a top-to-bottom clean in a while, the counts above are the practical reason to start with a deep clean and then move to recurring regular cleaning.

Finding 5: Most cleaning searches are do-it-yourself questions, but hire searches get more clicks

Of the 1,366 queries in our 28-day Search Console sample, 657 (48.1%) were do-it-yourself or how-to questions, such as how to clean a washing machine or how to get pet odor out of carpet. 524 queries contained the phrase “how to.” Only 118 queries (8.6%) were hire or cost searches. Still, the hire and cost group earned 24 of the 121 query-level clicks (19.8%), with a click-through rate of 0.38%, compared with 0.10% for the do-it-yourself group. In total, 1,285 of the 1,366 queries (94.1%) got zero clicks.

Hire and cost impressions in the sample grew from 4,125 in the previous 28 days to 6,252 in the latest 28 days. Twenty-two queries included “near me,” and together they had 1,564 impressions and 5 clicks.

Finding 6: The top hire searches are about who, not how much

Ten queries in the sample used a price word such as cost, price, or how much, and together they had 775 impressions. The biggest hire searches were broader: people looked for a service or a person first.

Source: Pro Housekeepers Google Search Console, Queries report, last 28 days, exported October 30, 2026.

What this means if you are deciding to hire help

The average person spends about 34 minutes a day on housework, and people who clean on a given day spend about an hour and a half. A recurring professional clean covers that routine work: our regular checklist has 23 tasks across the kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, and living areas. The deeper jobs that most people put off, like baseboards, range hoods, and window sills, are on the deep cleaning list instead.

Ready to hand it off? See what’s included in regular house cleaning, check rates on our pricing page, or book a cleaning online.

Frequently asked questions