How Often You Should Sweep Your Floors, According to Martha

If you’ve ever wondered how often you really need to sweep your floors—or why it matters so much—Martha has very clear opinions. Sure, sweeping may not be the most glamorous of tasks. But it’s one of those essential habits that help keep your home fresh and it makes other cleaning tasks just a little bit easier. It’s a chore worthy of such steadfast preferences. 

So how often should you sweep your floors? According to Martha, daily—especially in the kitchen. Here's her simple sweeping routine for fresher floors and a cleaner home.

The Case for Daily Sweeping

Think of daily sweeping as maintenance, not an all-out deep clean. A quick pass with a broom or dry microfiber mop is often enough to reset the space and prevent today's mess from becoming next week’s problem. 

“Daily, sweep floors—especially in the kitchen,” Martha writes in her book, decorvow’s Organizing. It’s where crumbs multiply the fastest and foot traffic is particularly heavy. “If you wash and put away the dishes, wipe down the counters, and sweep the floors each day, you'll stay steps ahead of the dirt, making your weekly routine that much easier to do,” she adds in The Martha Manual.

That word—"ahead"—is especially key here. Daily sweeping is both about tackling same-day messes and preventing buildup. Dirt, crumbs, pet hair, and dust don’t wait politely for your weekly cleaning day; they accumulate quickly, especially in high-traffic areas, and can become harder to remover the longer the mess sits.

“Establish good habits,” Martha says. Get in the rhythm of carving out a few minutes for a quick sweep as part of your nightly routine, to clear the floor of the day’s debris. (Nightly sweeping can set the stage for easier, calmer mornings.)

Most Floor Maintenance Starts With Sweeping

As with many tasks, maintaining flooring requires the proper order of operations. “Clean dry, then wet,” explains Martha in Organizing. Here, sweeping is a dry-cleaning step, and skipping it causes more problems than the time it takes. “There’s no other way to keep everyday grime, pet hair, and food crumbs from spreading around,” Martha says. Sweeping first prevents dirt from turning into muddy residue once moisture is introduced during mopping.

“Always thoroughly sweep, run a microfiber mop, or vacuum before wet-mopping the floor in any space,” says Martha. This will save you major time—no dirty mop water, or redepositing grit right back onto your floors. Mopping once a week after your daily sweep is usually sufficient, she adds.

How Sweeping Protects Your Floors

Beyond cleanliness, sweeping boasts another undeniable benefit: Martha points out that “starting by sweeping or vacuuming… keeps dust and dirt from scratching the surfaces.” This is especially important for hardwood, tile, and laminate floors, where fine grit can act like sandpaper underfoot. Daily sweeping removes abrasive particles before they can dull finishes or cause long-term damage or permanent scratches.

In other words, sweeping isn’t just about how your floors look—it’s about how long they last. “Sweeping, scrubbing, dusting, doing the laundry—all these deeds pay such generous dividends,” says Martha.