How many hours of cleaning does your home actually need? A straight answer from Calibee

“How many hours should I book?” is the question we get most, and the answer is short: studio or one-bedroom, 2 hours. Two-bedroom, 3 to 4 hours. Three bedrooms or a house, 4 hours and up. Anyone who tells you two hours is enough for every apartment has either never cleaned a two-bedroom with a toddler in it, or is trying to sell you a cheap visit.

But the number by bedrooms is only where you start. After four years of scheduling hourly cleaning across Thao Dien, District 1, District 7 and Binh Thanh, we see it every week: the same two-bedroom apartment is comfortably done in 3 hours in one building and still unfinished after 4 in the next. The difference is not square metres. It is four things, and you control all four.

Where to start: hours by home type

For a home that is lived in normally and cleaned once a week:

• Studio or one-bedroom — 2 hours. Floors swept and mopped, kitchen counters and stovetop, bathroom, rubbish out, bed changed if you leave linen out. Not enough for windows, ceiling fans or the tops of wardrobes.
• Two-bedroom — 3 to 4 hours. Three if the place is tidy and lightly furnished. Four if there are children, a pet, or you want windows and the balcony done as well.
• Three bedrooms, a townhouse or a villa — 4 hours and up. For a house over several floors, don’t book one cleaner for six hours. Book two cleaners for three hours: done in a morning, more even quality because nobody is working into their sixth hour, and you don’t lose the whole day.

One rule we repeat to every new client: if you’re torn between two numbers, book the higher one for the first visit. An hour too many, you notice immediately and cut it next time. An hour too few, you only find out after the cleaner has left and the second bathroom wasn’t touched. Clients who book two hours are the ones who most often end up adding time halfway through — and adding time mid-visit is never as good as booking it, because the cleaner may already have the next job.

First: what “clean” means to you

This is the biggest variable and the one almost nobody says out loud. For some people, clean is floors without dust and a kitchen without grease. For others, clean is a mirror with no water marks, skirting boards with no grime, and every bottle on the spice rack lifted and wiped. In the same two-bedroom apartment, those two definitions are a full hour apart.

Neither is wrong. But an expectation you haven’t stated is an expectation that won’t be met. When you book, put two or three things you definitely want done well and one or two you don’t care about in the notes — and use the in-app chat (it translates both ways) for anything that changes week to week. Ten seconds of typing saves twenty minutes of the cleaner standing in your hallway wondering whether the study is off limits. In a two-hour visit, twenty minutes is a room.

Second: what machines you have

A robot vacuum or mop that runs daily takes the single most time-consuming job — floors — down to corners and under furniture; in a two-bedroom that’s about half an hour back. A dryer removes hanging and collecting laundry entirely. A dishwasher saves fifteen to twenty minutes at the sink. In the other direction: open shelving, lots of decorative objects, a shag rug, fabric sofas — each adds a little, and the little adds up.

Put bluntly: three hours in a “lots of machines, not much stuff” two-bedroom gets more done than four hours in the same floor plan with no machines and a lot of stuff. If you’re thinking about buying a robot mop, think of it as an hour of cleaning handed back to you every week.

Third: pets and ironing

A dog or a cat: add thirty minutes, no negotiation. Hair on the sofa, the floor and in corners roughly doubles the vacuuming and mopping, and a cleaner who rushes it to stay on time leaves you finding fur that same evening.

Ironing: a basket of fifteen to twenty pieces is forty-five minutes to an hour. If you book two hours and add ironing, you’ve booked one hour of cleaning. Treat ironing as its own hour, or move it to a separate visit.

Fourth: one-off visits versus a regular schedule

This is why plenty of two-bedroom households on a weekly schedule book only three hours and still have a cleaner home than the neighbour who books four hours ad hoc. Two things happen when the same person comes every week:

• They get faster. The first visit, a cleaner spends twenty to thirty minutes learning where the cloths are, whether you want floors first or last, which room is off limits. By the third visit, that time is gone — and it comes back to you as half an hour of actual cleaning.
• The work gets split across days. With two or three visits a week, no single visit has to do everything: Monday is bedrooms and laundry, Wednesday the kitchen, Friday bathrooms and windows; floors and rubbish every time. Each visit is 2–3 hours, and the home ends up better looked after than with one 4-hour push a week.

If you’re booking a one-off 4-hour visit every week for a two-bedroom, try a regular schedule of two visits at 2.5–3 hours with the same cleaner instead. Same hours, cleaner home, and no explaining from scratch every Saturday.

Before the first visit: have a cleaning kit in the apartment

Calibee cleaners don’t bring their own mop and bucket, and that’s deliberate. Equipment that travels from home to home carries whatever it picked up in the last one; and many of our clients react to the scented products a cleaner would otherwise choose. Your kit stays in your home, and you control both.

If you don’t have one, a basic kit — flat mop with a wringer bucket, broom and dustpan, four or five microfibre cloths, a scrubbing brush, floor cleaner, glass cleaner, bathroom cleaner, gloves — costs about what a dinner out does, from any supermarket, and lasts a year. Or say so in the app chat and the cleaner can buy a kit on the way to the first visit. Don’t let the first visit lose thirty minutes to a shopping trip.

When hourly cleaning is the wrong tool

If the apartment hasn’t been cleaned in weeks, the dust is thick, the kitchen has old grease, the grout has gone orange — a six-hour hourly booking still won’t get you what you want, and you’ll be disappointed for the wrong reason: not a bad cleaner, the wrong tool. Hourly cleaning is designed to keep a clean home clean, not to rescue one. Book a one-off deep clean first, then switch to hourly visits to maintain it.

When it’s easiest to get a good cleaner

Early morning and early afternoon are the slots everyone wants; weekends fill faster than weekdays. If you need your regular cleaner, or a same-day booking, mid-morning or mid-afternoon on a weekday is where the availability is. On a regular schedule, a fixed day and time is the surest way for Calibee to keep the same person on your home.

In short

• Studio or one-bedroom: 2 hours.
• Two-bedroom: 3 hours if tidy with a robot and a dryer; 4 hours with children, pets, or windows and balcony included.
• Three bedrooms, townhouse, villa: 4 hours and up, or two cleaners for 3 hours.
• Regular schedule: each visit 30 minutes to an hour shorter than a one-off, and the work split across days.
• Kit: keep one in the home; if you don’t have one, ask the cleaner to buy it before the first visit.
• Neglected home: deep clean first.
• Unsure: book the higher number the first time, and write down the two or three things that matter most.

New to hiring help in Vietnam? Start with our guide to how hourly cleaning works in Ho Chi Minh City. Ready to book: choose hours, day and notes in the Calibee app, and pick a regular schedule if you want to keep the same cleaner.