Spring cleaning before Chinese New Year and Hari Raya: a room-by-room plan

Spring cleaning before Chinese New Year or Hari Raya is less about a single deep clean and more about working through the whole home in a sensible order before guests start arriving. Here’s a plan that spreads the work out instead of leaving it all to the last weekend.

Start with a room-by-room walk-through

Before touching anything, walk through the home and note what each room actually needs: a full deep clean, a light refresh, or just decluttering. Living and dining areas usually need the most attention since that’s where guests spend the most time, while bedrooms and storage areas can often get a lighter pass.

The order that avoids redoing work

Dust and debris fall, so cleaning top to bottom saves you from re-cleaning a surface you already finished.

1. Ceilings, fans, and light fixtures: the most commonly skipped spots, and the ones that shed dust onto everything below once disturbed.
2. Walls, door frames, and the tops of cabinets: wipe down before floors, since dust here settles downward.
3. Windows and glass panels: inside and out if accessible, since natural light shows up smudges fast during daytime gatherings.
4. Furniture and upholstery: sofas, dining chairs, and any fabric that’s absorbed a year of daily use.
5. Floors last: vacuum, mop, or steam clean once everything above has already shed its dust.

Areas worth extra time

Kitchens take the heaviest use over a festive period, so a proper degrease of the stovetop, range hood, and cabinet fronts pays off before the cooking marathon begins. Bathrooms deserve a full descale rather than a surface wipe if guests will be using them. Carpets, rugs, and sofas, especially if there hasn’t been a professional clean in six months or more, are worth booking ahead since specialist slots tend to book out fast in the two weeks before either festival.

What to DIY vs what to outsource

Task	DIY-friendly	Consider a professional
Dusting, wiping surfaces	Yes	Not usually needed
Decluttering and organising	Yes	Not usually needed
Carpet and upholstery deep clean	Only light spot cleaning	Yes, for full extraction
Window and glass panels (high or exterior)	Ground floor only	Yes, for upper floors or large panels
Full home deep clean with limited time	If you have a free weekend	Yes, if time is short and guests are coming

Timing it right

Booking two to three weeks ahead gives enough buffer to schedule a professional crew for the heavier jobs without competing for the last-minute rush. If you’re planning to host, prioritise the rooms guests will actually see and use: living room, dining area, guest bathroom, and entryway, before spending equal time on rooms that stay closed off during the gathering. If your festive prep happens to coincide with wrapping up a renovation, our post-renovation cleaning timeline guide covers how long that specific clean takes and when to book it.

Spring cleaning doesn’t need to happen in one exhausting stretch. Spreading it across two or three weekends, with the heaviest jobs booked out to a professional in between, tends to produce a cleaner result than a single rushed day right before guests arrive.

Sharing the load across the household

A full spring clean goes faster with the whole household pitching in rather than one person tackling everything alone. Splitting tasks by room, or by type of work (one person on surfaces and dusting, another on floors and windows), keeps things moving without anyone burning out halfway through. For households with kids old enough to help, light tasks like tidying toys, wiping low surfaces, or organising their own rooms are a reasonable way to involve them without adding to the workload of coordinating the whole clean.

Decluttering before you deep clean

It’s worth setting aside a bit of time before the deep clean itself to sort through items that have accumulated over the year, old clothes, unused kitchenware, decorations that no longer get used. Doing this first means the actual cleaning covers less clutter and goes faster, and many households donate or pass on items during this period anyway, since festive spring cleaning naturally overlaps with giving things a fresh start before the new year or the celebration begins.

After the festival

Once guests have come and gone, a lighter follow-up clean, focused on the areas that saw the most use, kitchen, dining area, and any guest bathroom, closes out the season properly. This is also a reasonable time to note what worked and what didn’t for next year: which areas took longer than expected, or which professional booking should happen earlier next time to avoid the last-minute rush.

For more on how providers handling this seasonal rush are ranked, see our methodology page, and check the home page for the full range of categories if your plan covers more than one type of cleaning.