15 Small Details That Make People Think Your Home Is So Clean

Cleaning is not a competition. But there may be moments when you might want to impress your guests or secretly wonder how your home’s hygiene stacks up. Over on Reddit, in the r/askreddit thread, user Ok_Emergency455 recently asked, “What’s the small detail in a home that makes you think: Oh, these people are very clean?” Answers came flooding in, and they were illuminating.

Whether you’re looking for tips on how to keep your home clean and tidy, don’t want to gross out guests, or just came to gloat (aka acknowledge your hard work), here are some of the tell-tale indications that make people think your cleaning game is next-level.

1. Clean Baseboards

Dozens of Redditors concurred that baseboards are a barometer of cleanliness. User Euphoric_Extreme4168 went a step further, specifying, “Baseboard tops, so many only clean the face of the board and leave the top.” If you hate getting down on your knees, a damp microfiber cloth attached to a broom can be a painless way to clean baseboards.

2. Grime-Free Door Handles and Light Switches

If you want to make your living room feel fresh in 15 minutes, focus your cleaning crosshairs on light switch covers and doors. The Reddit thread resounded with mentions of these areas. No_Art4627 summed it up by saying, “Light switches and the walls around them [are] clean. Also door handles and the doors themselves.”

3. Squeaky Clean Toilet Seat Hinges

Toilets top the list of tough places to clean — and you need to go beyond the bowl. According to multiple Redditors, immaculate seat hinges signal you’re an accomplished cleaner. To unlock this level of sanitary prowess, you’ll need to unscrew and remove the seat.

4. No Dust on the Top of the Refrigerator

Most of us forget that the tops of our refrigerators exist — but multiple tall Redditors chimed in with reminders that this surface is in full view to anyone over 6 feet. “I’m 6’5 and I always judge people by how clean the top of their fridge is,“ commented Dapper_Use6099.

5. A Nice-Smelling Home

“Smell is a biggie” to Redditor breezeblock87, and others agreed. Extra points if you have pets and your home smells great. But beware of using air freshener products to mask odors. User Sangfroid88 pointed out that if they smell Febreze, they “assume that nothing in that room/house/car is really ever cleaned.”

6. A Clean Microwave Interior

Another clear consensus in the comments is that an immaculate microwave interior speaks volumes, particularly “the top on the inside,” according to user midnightchicken79.

7. Spotless, Streak-Free Mirrors

“If you walk into a bathroom and the mirror is spotless,” says user poised_outcome, “you know you’ve entered the domain of the truly clean.” So if you’ve mastered the streak-free way to clean a mirror, major kudos.

8. Clean Faucets

Gleaming taps are another clue that someone’s ultra-clean, according to multiple commenters. And your rep will rise even further if there’s “no grime behind the kitchen sink faucet,” notes TurkisCircus. “That’s someone who cleans for real.”

9. A Shower Door Squeegee

That squeegee innocently propped against the shower glass? It’s a secret weapon that the masters of cleaning use to maintain a spotless stall, and one Redditor said that the mere presence of one communicates commitment. Besides letting you look house proud, squeegees stop hard water marks in their tracks and make cleaning the bathroom easier.

10. A Pristine Sink

A shiny clean sink was mentioned by multiple users, and digitalgirlie upped the ante by specifying a “clean and dry” sink.

11. Clean Floors

Clean floors, of course, cropped up in the comments. Multiple users observed that a no-shoes-inside policy shows next-level commitment to keeping floors spotless.

12. Dirt-Free Door Frames

Many Redditors ranked freshly wiped door frames as a hallmark of the super-clean. An absence of dust “on top of a door” is also a secret signal, according to user A_Tad_Bonkers.

13. Clean Washcloths and Sponges

If you want guests to assume cleaning is your superpower, switch out those sponges and washcloths. Storing dish soap and scrubbers out of sight can earn you extra brownie points, with Redditor Rude-Bend713 naming “no dish soap or sponges in view (under the sink instead)” as the thing that tells them someone is fastidiously clean.

14. Dust-Free Ceiling Fan Blades

The thread also revealed that people do notice dusty ceiling fans, and that immaculate blades show you’re an accomplished cleaner — especially if there is a “clean edge on all five ceiling fan blades,” according to dypledocus.

15. A Clean Trash Can (and Surrounds)

If you “open the kitchen trash can and it smells like Lysol rather than dinner from two days ago,” Diligent-Thought-419 says, “that’s someone who cares.” A clean surrounding area can also send the message that you’re handling business like a germ-busting boss.