The Cleaning Secret Chicago Homes Need: Mastering “Dwell Time”

Living in Chicago means juggling work, life, and the constant battle to keep your home looking presentable. Between the lakefront winds bringing in dust and the hustle of city life, finding time for a proper clean can feel impossible. You might be using the right products, but if your surfaces aren’t sparkling, you could be missing one crucial step that professional cleaners swear by.

Have you ever sprayed a cleaner and wiped it off immediately, only to find the grime still there? This is the most common mistake people make. Like a quick TV commercial, we’ve been trained to think cleaning is instant. But true, effective cleaning requires patience—specifically, letting your cleaner sit. This waiting period is called “dwell time,” and it’s the key to cleaning smarter, not harder.

What is Dwell Time and Why Does It Matter?

Dwell time is the period after you apply a cleaning product when you let it sit wet on a surface. This is when the chemicals or solutions actively break down dirt, grease, and germs. Rushing this process means you’re doing all the hard scrubbing work yourself, while the product you paid for goes to waste.

Think about dried jam on the kitchen counter or toothpaste splatter in the bathroom. Spraying and immediately wiping does nothing. But if you spray, walk away for 2-3 minutes, and then wipe, the mess lifts away easily. This simple shift can transform your apartment cleaning routine from a chore into a quick win.

The Right Product + The Right Time = A Flawless Clean

It starts with using the correct product for the surface and the soil. Once applied liberally (so it stays wet), the dwell time begins. This is especially critical for disinfecting. To actually kill germs, most disinfectants need to sit wet for 2 to 10 minutes, as the label instructs. Letting them dwell ensures your effort and money aren’t wasted.

How to Use Dwell Time in Every Room

1. Conquering Kitchen Grease & Grime

For a greasy stovetop or backsplash, don’t just spray and scrub. Choose a heavy-duty degreaser, spray it on generously, and let it dwell for 5-10 minutes. You might even re-spray if it starts to dry. When you return, the grease will wipe away with minimal effort. This is the smart technique behind a true deep cleaning help.

2. Banishing Bathroom Soap Scum & Stains

Hard water stains and soap scum require a similar approach. Apply your cleaner, let it dwell, and allow the product to dissolve the buildup. You’ll save your energy and your elbows. When a job feels too overwhelming, that’s the perfect time to schedule a cleaning with a pro who has this process down to a science.

3. Winning the Laundry Stain Battle

Stain removal is both an art and a science. The key is to treat the stain quickly with the right product, then let it dwell for several minutes before washing. For enzyme-based cleaners, you may need even longer. This gives the solution time to break the stain down so your washer can finish the job.

Smart Cleaning Saves Time & Money

You might worry that using more product is wasteful. But the real waste happens when you use too little, wipe too soon, and have to repeat the entire process. Effective dwell time means you use the product once, correctly. For the budget-conscious, many effective cleaners can be made at home for less. But for those with packed schedules, leveraging fast cleaning services is the ultimate time-saver.

Incorporating dwell time is a game-changer. It makes cleaning easier, more effective, and can even save you money on products. If the idea of a perfectly clean home without the weekend scrubbing sounds ideal, remember that professional home cleaning is just a click away. As a trusted Chicago cleaning company, we use these expert techniques every day to clean your apartment efficiently.

This is the dead giveaway that someone does not know how to clean properly, and that is if you spray a product on and wipe it off immediately. This is something that we see in TV commercials all the time because they only have 30 seconds to get their message out. But in reality, when you’re cleaning, you need to spray a product on and let it dwell. That’s right. So, in this video, we are going to talk about the importance of dwell time, how to do it properly, when you can wipe something off safely, and ultimately how to improve your cleaning. And if you’re new here, welcome to the Clean MySpace channel. My name is Melissa Maker. I’m an accidental cleaning expert, and it’s my job to teach you the most efficient and effective way to get your cleaning done right the first time. So, if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. I started a cleaning business back in 2006. I was 23 years old. And before that, I had no idea about dwell time. But I did know that when I tried to clean something, I wasn’t getting great results. I was using the right products. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, but I had to work so hard to get something clean. And I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until I learned about dwell time. When I talk about dwell time, this is specifically what I mean. applying the correct product, that’s the P part of the equation, to the surface to deal with whatever is dirtying up that surface. So, that’s why it’s really important to understand the varying products and of course the surfaces that you’re trying to clean. What people forget is that when they just spray a product on, it can’t work instantaneously. It needs time. It needs dwell time. And that’s exactly what dwell time is. It’s the time it takes for the product to dig in and do its work so that you don’t have to work as hard. Products are incredible. We just have to give them the opportunity to shine. Let’s say you’ve got some toothpaste splatters on your bathroom counter or some spilled jam on the counter in your kitchen and it’s kind of dry. If you spray a little bit of all-purpose cleaner on the appropriate product for the surface and then wipe it off right away, you probably won’t get rid of any of it. Instead, what you’ll do is you’ll spray the product on, you’ll work your way around the rest of the room for a couple of minutes, and then after about 2 minutes, 3 minutes, you can come back and wipe the surface down. The really important thing with dwell time, and this is across the board, is you always want your surface to be wet. So, you’re going to spray liberally. I know we’ve talked a lot about disinfecting over the past couple of years, but disinfecting has a lot to do with dwell time. Because when we watch a TV commercial and we learn about a new disinfectant, that company has about 30 seconds to explain to us everything they need to say about the product. But we can’t learn how to use the product in a TV commercial because they don’t teach us about dwell time. But the back of the package will. And if you read the back of a disinfecting product, you will see that you actually need to let that product sit wet on a surface for anywhere between 2 minutes all the way up to 10 minutes in order for it to kill the germs on the surface. Now, again, this comes down to selecting the right product for the surface. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that the money that we’re spending on the disinfectant is actually not going to waste and it’s doing its job. In order for this to be the case, learn how to use the product properly. Use the right amount of dwell time. Stain removal is both an art and a science. But one thing I can say for sure is that you’ve got to treat your stain really quick. And then you have to use the right product and allow it to sit for a couple of minutes before you launder so that the product can do its job. And if you’re using something like an enzymebased cleaner, you might want to let it sit for a little bit longer so that that product can really work. If you spray a product on and chuck your garment right into the washing machine afterward, the product hasn’t really had a chance to break that stain down, break those bonds, lift the dirt to the surface, and prime the garment to release the stain. So, the next time you go ahead and treat a stain, just give the product a few minutes before you turn on your machine. When we’re dealing with a heavyduty mess, whether it’s a large buildup of soap scum, or hard water stains in the bathroom, or a super greasy backsplash, stove, or overhead exhaust in the kitchen, this work can feel really overwhelming. And what I see people do is spin their wheels. I don’t like to work hard when I clean. And I know that if I use the right product, the right tool, and the right technique, I actually don’t have to. So, when I clean these heavy duty areas, I like to work smart. And this is what I do. I clear that area. I choose the right product so I level up. I use something that’s more applicable for heavy duty work. And I spray that on the surface. I spray it on liberally, like I hose it down. I don’t waste product, but the goal is that you don’t want that surface to dry before you get back to it. If the surface is dry, the product can’t do its thing. So sometimes if I know it needs like 10 minutes, I might come back to it, respray it a little bit, but then at the end of that 10-minute period when I hit it up with whatever cleaning tool I’m using, that schmutz comes right off. I don’t have to scrub. I don’t need to sweat. I don’t need to work too hard because I’ve let the product do its thing. And that’s how I like to clean and that’s how I want you to clean. I want to make a distinction here because I know I just talked about being very liberal with your product application and you might be thinking, “Yeah, but that’s going to waste money.” Here’s the thing. Sometimes you have to apply a lot of product to get the job done. But where product gets wasted is when you apply the product, wipe it off quickly, notice that the work hasn’t been done, and then you have to apply the product again, then you wipe it off again quickly, and then you go through that wasting cycle of reapplying and wiping. It wastes product and it wastes time. The other thing, and you can learn more about this in our 50 DIY cleaners ebook, is you can make a lot of these very effective products yourself for way less than the price of a store-bought product. Well, now you know the importance of dwell time and exactly how to incorporate it into your cleaning routine. And let me know in the comments if dwell time is something that you currently do with your cleaning or if it’s something new and you’re going to give it a try. Because I promise you, if you haven’t done it and you start doing it, it is a gamecher and also it will save you money cuz you’re not going to be wasting as much product. Lots of good reasons to do it. If you like what we do here at Clean MySpace, you should consider subscribing to our email newsletter. It’s called the dirty dish and there’s a link to it down below. And if you like what we do here and want to support me and my very small team, you can do so by becoming a member. If you like saving time when you’re cleaning, you will love this video. It is called Seven Overnight Cleaning Hacks You Can Literally Clean While You’re Sleeping. Check this video out. And if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel so you can see these videos in your feed. Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you next