The Three Spring Cleaning Jobs Worth Doing First
Spring cleaning has a way of collapsing under its own weight. You block out a Saturday, you start in the linen cupboard because it is right there, and by two in the afternoon you have three piles on the bedroom floor, a headache, and a house that looks worse than when you began.
So when nine.com.au asked us which spring cleaning tasks actually make a difference, the honest answer was: not many of them, and not all at once.
We named three. Here is the longer version, including how we do each one on a job, how long it really takes, and the mistakes that cost people an afternoon.
"Don't try to do the whole house in one weekend. That's how it ends up half finished. Three sessions of about 90 minutes over three weekends will actually get you there, whereas one massive Saturday usually won't."
Simone Tsigolis, Jetlag Remedy, quoted in nine.com.au, 13 September 2026
1. Windows, tracks and flyscreens
If you only do one thing this spring, do this one. It is the job with the biggest gap between effort and visible result.
"The tracks are usually full of grit and dead bugs, and the flyscreens go grey with dust, which means you're pulling all of that through the house every time you open a window over summer."
That last part is the bit most people miss. A grey flyscreen is not just ugly. It is a dust filter that has stopped filtering, sitting directly in the path of every breeze you let in for the next five months.
The order matters, and it is not the order most people use.
Screens out first. Take them out before you touch anything else. Write a small number on the frame edge in pencil and note which window it belongs to, because they are rarely as interchangeable as they look.
Hose the screens outside. Lay them flat on grass or lean them against a fence. Warm water, a drop of dishwashing liquid, a soft brush, then rinse. Do not reach for a pressure washer. It will stretch the mesh and pop it out of the frame, and replacing screens costs far more than the ten minutes you saved.
Vacuum the tracks dry. Crevice tool, corner to corner. Dry, always, before anything wet touches them. Grit plus water equals paste, and paste is a twenty minute job instead of a two minute one.
Then wipe the tracks. Damp cloth, and an old toothbrush for the corners where the runners sit. Dry them off properly so nothing sits damp in the channel.
Glass last. Pick an overcast day, or work on whichever side is in shade. Direct sun dries the glass before you finish and leaves you with streaks you then have to chase. Two cloths works fine: one damp, one dry, buffed in a different direction so you can see which side any remaining mark is on.
Time: roughly 15 to 20 minutes per window the first time, less once they are back in decent shape.
The mistake: doing the glass first. The screens then drip down the outside of it and you do the whole thing twice.
2. Bedding and soft furnishings
The second one is less satisfying to look at and more worth doing, especially if anyone in the house gets hay fever.
"A warm bed in a closed room all winter is exactly what dust mites like, and it tends to peak right as hay fever season kicks in. Wash whatever you can on the hottest cycle the care label allows, give the mattress and the couch a proper vacuum, and get the rugs outside for a bit of sun."
Heat is the part that does the work. A warm wash makes things smell clean. A hot wash is what actually deals with dust mites, so check the care label and run the hottest cycle it allows rather than defaulting to your usual setting.
What to include, in the order we would do it:
Bedding and mattress protectors. Strip everything, including the protector, which most people forget until it has been on for a year.
Pillows. Most synthetic pillows can go through the machine. Wash two at a time so the drum stays balanced. The critical part is drying them all the way through, because a pillow that is still damp in the middle is a mould problem you cannot see.
The mattress itself. Upholstery tool, slowly, and pay attention to the seams and the edge piping where everything collects. Then rotate it while it is bare, since you are already standing there.
The couch. Same tool, cushions off, down the sides and the back.
Rugs, throws and cushion covers. Outside for a few hours. Sunlight and moving air do more for a rug than another pass with the vacuum. Vacuum both sides once it comes back in.
Time: a washing machine day, but only around 30 minutes of your actual attention.
3. Air conditioner filters and ceiling fans
The one nobody thinks about until the first hot day, at which point it is too late.
"That filter hasn't been touched since March, and there's usually a thick layer of dust sitting on top of the fan blades ... It's about 10 minutes each, and your air con runs more efficiently [with a clean filter] too."
Turn either of them on with six months of dust in place and you have effectively built a machine for redistributing that dust around the room at head height.
Split system: turn it off at the wall first. The front panel lifts up and the filters slide out. Vacuum the loose dust off, rinse in lukewarm water with a little detergent, then dry completely in the shade before they go back in. A filter refitted while still damp is a reliable way to end up with a unit that smells musty for the rest of summer.
Ducted system: the filter sits behind the return air grille in the ceiling. Same process, just with a ladder and a second person holding it.
Ceiling fans: power off at the wall, then slide an old pillowcase over each blade, close it around the blade, and pull it back towards you. The dust comes off into the pillowcase instead of onto the bed below. Wash the pillowcase afterwards, obviously.
Time: about 10 minutes each. This is the highest return on effort of anything on this list, and it also means the unit is not fighting a blocked filter every time it runs.
The three weekend plan
The reason spring cleaning fails is almost never the tasks. It is the schedule. Here is the version that actually finishes.
Weekend 1
Windows, tracks and flyscreens, starting with the rooms you sit in most - 90 minutes
Weekend 2
Bedding, mattresses, couch, rugs. Start the first load early - 90 minutes
Weekend 3
Air conditioner filters, ceiling fans, exhaust fans, light fittings - 60 to 90 minutes
Three weekends, four and a half hours total, and the house is genuinely different at the end of it. Compare that to one enormous Saturday that gets abandoned somewhere around the linen cupboard.
Four things we would skip
Trying to do the house in one go. Covered above, but it is the mistake that makes all the others possible.
A pressure washer on flyscreens. Tempting, fast, and a reliable way to buy new screens.
Cleaning glass in direct sun. You will do it twice.
Starting with the wardrobe. Decluttering is a real and useful job, but it is a different job with a different headspace, and it is the one most likely to swallow the entire day and leave the actual cleaning undone. Put it on its own weekend, not this one.
Or hand it over
Spring cleans are one of the things we get asked for most at this time of year, in Sydney and in Perth. If the three weekend plan reads like three weekends you do not have, that is a reasonable conclusion to reach, and it is the one we are here for.
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Simone Tsigolis is the founder of Jetlag Remedy, a premium residential cleaning service operating across Sydney and Perth. Jetlag Remedy was featured in nine.com.au in September 2026.