I Tried the 5x5 Cleaning Method, and My Whole House Was Clean in 5 Minutes (2024)

Right now, my house is in a state of limbo. Between two small children, our fairly extensive cottage renovation, and life in general, it makes me want to deep clean everything while also fearing there’s no real point. At least, not until we’re out of limbo.

So, when I heard about an easy, low-impact tidying technique called the 5x5 cleaning method, I was sold on trying it.

What Is the 5x5 Method?

If the 5x5 method is as new to you as it was to me, allow me to explain. Coined by Steph of The Secret Slob, this technique requires nothing but a timer and twenty-five free minutes. Pick five rooms or zones and dedicate five minutes per area. In twenty-five minutes, Steph promises a cleaner, less cluttered home.

As instructed, I set a twenty-five-minute window for myself and decided to pick five zones that have been bugging me lately: our entryway, our landing, our living room built-in shelves, our kitchen counters, and my desk.

The goal of the 5x5 method is to focus more on tidying and decluttering, and these areas are notoriously cluttered.

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Zone One: Our Built-In Shelves

Every family has this spot: the one that becomes a dumping ground for stuff. I think in most homes, it’s usually in the kitchen but in ours, it’s a corner of the living room.

The current stuff in question includes miscellaneous electronics, a new cookbook, a craft my son keeps migrating down from his room, and, most importantly, a friendship bracelet-making kit for a very important upcoming concert. In a word: chaos.

I set my timer for five minutes and got to work. Five minutes later, voila! Everything was back in its place or had a new home. That nagging feeling was already lifting.

Zone Two: Our Landing

Like many London homes, the entry into ours is long, steep, and skinny. It’s a slight headache for a few reasons—one being that we have multiple drop zones as you enter the house.

There are coat hooks and rain gear down by the front door. Then, once you come upstairs, we have a shoe shelf (which I’ll get to in a minute). Finally, there’s a small landing area that has become another drop point-turned-living junk drawer.

I’ve made my peace with it, but lately, it’s been getting more hectic. Sunglasses, mail, a pair of boy’s ballet slippers…if it’s random, it seems to end up here. But it’s also an incredibly small area, so five minutes should be a breeze, right?

Here’s where I learned that the 5x5 method works best if you have absolutely no wildcards. I opened up our small junk drawer to find my pinboard tacks had spilled everywhere. Face up, of course, with hair bands caught in the fray. Basically, I had booby-trapped myself.

My timer went off and I wasn’t finished, but it wasn’t exactly a project I could abandon. There were pushpins everywhere. Instead, I saw it through…and lost an additional three minutes in the end.

Zone Three: Our Shoe Shelf

As you may have sensed, our entryway system is the biggest pain point of our home, and as a shoe-free house, our shoe system is the worst of it. I figured this area would be easy after the pushpin fiasco. I set my timer, reset my optimism, and got to work.

I moved quickly through my husband’s shoes and my shoes, as well as the top shelf full of reusable shopping bags and backpacks. Everything was going great until I decided to clear off the top before tackling the right side.

Here, I found a bunch of random items that had made it into our sunglass basket. Things like an old box of band-aids, my daughter’s field hockey shin pads and mouth guard, a small plastic tube of bubbles, and a lot of half-used hand sanitizer.

I did a quick reshuffle and then moved down to the next shelf, where all my kids’ school bags go. For some reason, they have so many bags. I'm talking backpacks and book bags and PE bags and guitar bags and swim bags and ballet bags. Of course, as soon as I pulled one out, they all came tumbling off.

It was at this exact moment that my timer went off. Once again, I was in too deep to abandon ship, so I had no choice but to see it through. Plus, the left side of the shelf looked great, so I wasn’t about to leave the right side in chaos mode.

In the end, I used the rest of my twenty-five minutes here—and then some. Rather than move on to my final two zones, I busted out the vacuum and cleaned a little deeper than I originally planned.

The Final Verdict?

In theory, I love the 5x5 cleaning method. I think if it’s just a matter of clearing off surfaces, it’s genius. But in practice? It reminded me of a productivity technique I also love called the Pomodoro Method.

In case you haven’t heard of it, much like the 5x5 method, the Pomodoro Method also calls for twenty-five-minute increments of dedicated work time, with five-minute breaks in between. I find it's a great way to bust through my writer’s block and help me stay focused, and, as with the 5x5 method, I often end up so sucked into my task that I ditch the timer completely.

So, while I don’t know that the 5x5 cleaning method worked for me the exact way it’s designed, it still got me to put my head down and focus. For that reason alone, I’m sure I’ll use it again.