Chinese New Year spring cleaning: a three-weekend plan

Chinese New Year falls on Saturday, 6 and Sunday, 7 February 2027, with the reunion dinner on the eve, Friday, 5 February. Many families clean the home thoroughly before the new year and avoid sweeping or cleaning on the first day, so the practical goal is simple: finish by the eve. Three January weekends, plus a few evenings in the final week, are enough for most homes without anyone giving up a whole week of leave.

Why the cleaning happens before, and not during

According to the National Heritage Board, many Chinese families spring clean before Chinese New Year because the Chinese word for dust, chen, sounds like the word for old, so sweeping away dust symbolises getting rid of bad luck and old things to welcome the new year. A National Library Board explainer on Chinese New Year superstitions adds the other half: cleaning on New Year's Day is said to sweep away the new year's luck, so the house is cleaned thoroughly beforehand.

Families observe these customs in different ways and to different degrees. Whatever yours are, finishing early also means the visiting days are for visiting, not for scrubbing.

The 2027 calendar at a glance

If your family hosts the reunion dinner, bring the kitchen deep clean forward by a week so the final days are only about food.

Weekend one: sort before you scrub

Cleaning around clutter is slow, so the first weekend is for decisions, not detergent. Go room by room with four bags or boxes: keep, donate, recycle and throw. Start with the rooms that collect the most: the storeroom, wardrobes, children's rooms and kitchen cupboards.

It helps to set a rule before you begin, such as clothes not worn in a year go, or one shelf of old paperwork gets sorted. By Sunday evening, the rubbish and donations should be out of the house, not stacked in the corridor.

Weekend two: the deep clean

This is the heavy weekend, and the order matters: work from the top of each room to the bottom, and leave floors for last.

• High places first: ceiling fans, light fittings, the tops of wardrobes and kitchen cabinets, and aircon casings (the inside of the unit is a technician's job).
• The kitchen: hood filters, hob, backsplash, the insides of cabinets you emptied last weekend, and the oven if you use it. Our kitchen degreasing guide walks through the hood.
• Bathrooms: descale shower screens and taps, scrub grout, and clean floor traps and the backs of toilets.
• Windows and curtains: wipe frames, tracks and any grilles you can reach safely from inside. Washable curtains need a dry day and time to rehang; curtains that need dry cleaning should go out now to be back in time.

Weekend three: the rooms visitors see

The last weekend is for the rooms where people will sit, eat and take photographs.

• The living room: vacuum the sofa and under the cushions, wipe the coffee table and TV console, and clean glass and mirrors.
• The entrance: the door, the gate, the shoe rack and the floor inside the door. Make space for visitors' shoes.
• Bedrooms: change the bedding, wipe surfaces and vacuum under the beds.
• Decorations: put them up only once the dusting is done. The National Heritage Board lists spring festival couplets, red paper cuttings with auspicious words such as fu, and plants such as pussy willow among common decorations.

The final week and the visiting days

Use the evenings of 1 to 4 February for the jobs that do not keep: clear the fridge before the reunion dinner shopping, do the last loads of laundry, mop the floors and take out the rubbish and recycling. By the eve, the home should need nothing more than a tidy.

During the visiting days, families that keep the custom leave the brooms alone on the first day. A little preparation keeps things pleasant anyway: a lidded bin in the living room, a tray for mandarin orange peel and a bowl for melon seed shells, and a cloth for spills. The proper tidy can wait until your family's customs allow it.

Getting help with HomeMaster

If you would rather not spend three weekends cleaning, split the work. You do the sorting and deciding, and a cleaner does the deep clean and the finishing. Tell Helen, our AI assistant on WhatsApp, which rooms matter and when you want them done, and she replies with real open times and the exact price. A one-off 3 to 4 hour clean is $25/hour, and weekends and public holidays cost the same as a weekday. Sessions are 2, 3 or 4 hours with one cleaner per visit, so a whole-home spring clean is usually two sessions or more.

The weeks before Chinese New Year are popular, so book your January dates early. Our one-off cleaning page explains what a single visit covers, and our guide to what a deep clean really means helps you decide how much time to book. You need a working vacuum cleaner and mop at home; your cleaner brings the cloths, brushes, a scrub pad, bin bags and a multi-purpose cleaner. Our home cleaning checklist is a good list to plan against.