Are you a “speed cleaner?” Most of us are. That’s the new term for people who prefer cleaning with quick “touch-ups” every day instead of a house cleaning marathon once a week. In fact, speed-cleaning now accounts for 70-percent of all the cleaning we do. And there are a few reasons why.

  • First, because we hate it. We’d pretty much rather do anything else than clean up. So we want to do it fast.  

  • Also we speed-clean because we’re all a bunch of multi-taskers. If we can’t spend an hour watching a TV show without texting at the same time, we certainly can’t dedicate an hour just to cleaning. So these days, we may Swiffer while holding the baby or talk on the phone while washing the dishes. 

  • The other reason we speed-clean? Because we’re busy. We’re “drive-by swipers,” who clean up on our way to doing something else like dragging a cleaning wipe across the counter on the way out the door to work. 

The speed-cleaning trend is also a reflection of the way we live today. There are more working-parent households today, so we have less time to devote to cleaning.  Plus we’re living in smaller spaces and having fewer children, so there are generally fewer messes to clean up. Also our whole mindset about cleaning has changed. Most of us are okay with living in a “somewhat messy” home because we’d rather spend more quality time with our friends and family and less time cleaning. 

That’s why we’re seeing more products in stores, catering to our speed-cleaning needs. Like cleaners that allow us to clean with one hand. Or combo cleaners that can clean everything from floors to windows, so we can use one bottle and be done. But get this: According to a new Procter and Gamble study, even though most people say they hate cleaning up, we do it more often today, on average, than we did a decade ago.