deep-clean-battle-planner

Use when planning a whole-house deep clean (spring cleaning, move-out, post-illness, before-guests) — turns rooms + available hours into ordered cleaning waves (dusty-first, top-down, machines working while you do), maps waves onto real weekend time blocks with a 15% buffer, matches surfaces x soils to the correct cleaner chemistry with never-mix warnings (bleach+acid, bleach+ammonia), and prints per-room zone playbooks with running time markers and upkeep recurrence cadences.

Overview

Deep cleaning fails the same way every time: people start in the wrong room (mopping before dusting), underestimate by 2× (no dwell-time buffer), run out of energy mid-house with the worst rooms untouched, and improvise cleaner chemistry that damages surfaces (vinegar on stone) or actually harms them (bleach + acid = chlorine gas; the US poison centers log tens of thousands of cleaning-substance exposures a year).

This skill treats the deep clean as a schedulable project:

1. plan — rooms + hours → ordered waves. Dust-generating and high traffic zones first; top-down inside every room; machines (washer, oven cleaner) started at T-0 so they clean in parallel; 15% buffer.
2. schedule — waves mapped onto your real time blocks ("Sat 3h, Sun 2h") with leftovers explicitly deferred, plus the upkeep cadence table that keeps the deep clean from relapsing in 3 weeks.
3. products — surface × soil → the correct cleaner, dwell time, and warnings; always prints the never-mix danger table.
4. zone — one-room playbook: ordered tasks with running time marks.

Pure stdlib, offline.

When to Use

• "This weekend I'm finally deep cleaning" — plan + schedule
• Spring cleaning / seasonal reset
• Move-out cleaning (deposit stakes)
• Post-illness household reset, before-guests blitz
• "What do I actually clean WITH?" — surface chemistry questions
• Building a recurring upkeep routine from the cadence table

Don't use for: hoarding-level remediation (professional help), post-flood/post-fire restoration (insurance + remediation contractors), or commercial/janitorial contracts (different standards and products).

How It Works — Numbered Steps

1. Inventory the rooms and honest hours:

   text

   python3 scripts/clean_planner.py plan --rooms kitchen,bathroom-main,livingroom --hours 4
   

   → waves with per-task minutes; what fits is planned, what doesn't is DEFERRED (a rushed room is worse than a planned one).
2. Map to actual calendar blocks:

   text

   python3 scripts/clean_planner.py schedule --blocks "Sat 3h,Sun 2h,Mon 1h" \
       --rooms-list kitchen,bathroom-main,livingroom,bedroom,hallway,entry
   

   → each block loaded to 85% capacity, leftovers named, upkeep cadence per room (kitchen 7d, bathroom 5d, hallway 30d...).
3. Check every unfamiliar surface before spraying:

   text

   python3 scripts/clean_planner.py products --surface hardwood --soil general
   python3 scripts/clean_planner.py products --surface tile-grout --soil mold
   

4. Execute a room with the zone playbook (running time marks keep pace honest):

   text

   python3 scripts/clean_planner.py zone --room kitchen
   

5. After the deep clean, adopt the upkeep cadences — recurrence (5d bathroom, 7d kitchen) prevents the next 8-hour marathon.

Ordering Rules (why the waves sort the way they do)

1. Dusty work first — dust falls; cleaning under falling dust is rework. Entry and kitchen (grease+traffic soil) lead.
2. Top-down in-room — fans → shelves → surfaces → floors, always.
3. Machines at T-0 — washer, dishwasher, oven-cleaner dwell, hood filter soaking: they clean unattended while your hands do other work.
4. Dwell chemistry — spray the tub, let it work 10 min WHILE doing the toilet and sink; scrubbing un-dwelt cleaner is 3× the effort.
5. 15% buffer — supplies hunt, labels, phone. A plan at 100% capacity is a plan to fail by 4 PM.

Common Pitfalls

1. Mixing cleaners. Bleach + vinegar/acid → chlorine gas; bleach + ammonia → chloramine; peroxide + vinegar → peracetic acid. One cleaner at a time, rinsed between. The danger table prints on every products run for a reason.
2. Vinegar on stone/marble/granite etches permanently — pH-neutral only on natural stone (same for hardwood finishes long-term).
3. Starting with floors. Floors are LAST in every room, after all dust has settled and been removed above them.
4. No dwell time. Degreaser needs 5-10 min, oven cleaner needs overnight, mold gel 15 min. Spray-then-immediately-scrub wastes most of the chemical's work.
5. Planning 100% of hours. The 85% capacity rule: 4h block = 204 planned minutes, not 240.
6. The relapse cycle. Deep clean once, no cadence → back to start in a month. The recurrence table (bathroom 5d, kitchen 7d, hallway 30d) is the actual product of the deep clean.
7. Magic eraser on glossy paint/sheen — it's micro-abrasive; test in a corner first (hallway task list warns).
8. Boiling-water drains or caustic + plunger sequences — drain cleaners are exothermic; follow label timing exactly, full flush between different products.

Example

text

Saturday-Sunday plan, 6 rooms, blocks "Sat 3h, Sun 2h, Mon 1h":

$ plan --rooms kitchen,bathroom-main,livingroom --hours 4
→ WAVE1 kitchen 90m (8 tasks) → WAVE2 bathroom 60m (7 tasks);
  livingroom DEFERRED.

$ schedule --blocks "Sat 3h,Sun 2h,Mon 1h" \
    --rooms-list kitchen,bathroom-main,livingroom,bedroom,hallway,entry
→ Sat: entry+kitchen+hallway (135m of 153m usable)
  Sun: bathroom+bedroom (100m of 102m usable)
  Mon: catch-up block; livingroom left over → next weekend's wave 1.

$ products --surface tile-grout --soil mold
→ chlorine bleach gel, 15m dwell, ventilate, never-mix table.

Upkeep cadence printed at the bottom — bathroom every 5 days is what
keeps grout mold from ever coming back.

References

• references/wave-method.md — the theory: soil types, ordering proofs, dwell chemistry, parallelizing machines, pace data behind task minutes.
• references/cleaning-chemistry.md — full surface × soil matrix, pH reasoning, the danger-mix table with symptoms and first response.