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Here's how many days of your life you'll spend cleaning, based on your location

All those hours really add up.

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Between vacuuming every room in the house, doing the dishes each night, scrubbing the toilets, organizing the mud room, wiping down the countertops, and every other not-so-fun task on your chores list, it often feels like you spend your entire life cleaning. And while that's a little dramatic, you might spend more time than you think, according to a new survey.

Mulberrys Garment Care polled adults across the country on how much time they spend on chores each week, then calculated the number of days that total would add up to in the average person's lifetime. While it varies state by state, the results show that Hawaii spends the most on cleaning (a staggering 138 days over a lifetime!) and Mississippi spends the least at 122 hours.

Below is the entire list of states along with our cleaning guru's top tips for getting your chores done faster and more efficiently—so you can hopefully cut your number down by a few days.

The state-by-state breakdown

Clean
Credit: Urbazon/Getty Images

Eat, clean, sleep, repeat.

Alabama: 123

Alaska: 130

Arizona: 133

Arkansas: 124

California: 136

Colorado: 134

Connecticut: 135

Delaware: 128

Florida: 132

Georgia: 128

Hawaii: 138

Idaho: 132

Illinois: 132

Indiana: 128

Iowa: 133

Kansas: 130

Kentucky: 124

Louisiana: 124

Maine: 130

Maryland: 132

Massachusetts: 134

Michigan: 129

Minnesota: 136

Mississippi: 122

Missouri: 128

Montana: 128

Nebraska: 132

Nevada: 130

New Hampshire: 132

New Jersey: 136

New Mexico: 129

New York: 136

North Carolina: 130

North Dakota: 131

Ohio: 127

Oklahoma: 124

Oregon: 133

Pennsylvania: 130

Rhode Island: 133

South Carolina: 126

South Dakota: 130

Tennessee: 126

Texas: 131

Utah: 133

Vermont: 134

Virginia: 132

Washington: 134

West Virginia: 123

Wisconsin: 133

Wyoming: 130

Our top tips for cleaning more efficiently

Counter
Credit: Alexander Medvedev/Getty Images

You'll have a sparkling clean house in no time.

First things first: Clean from top to bottom, says Jonathan Chan, our senior lab testing technician. "That means clean the ceiling fan first and the floor last," he explains. "You don't want to clean the floor twice because you knocked dust down when you're wiping down shelves." He also recommends tackling bigger jobs in stages to conserve your energy and make your to-do list feel more manageable. "For example, soften up your baked-on microwave stains by steam-cleaning it first," he says, noting that the Angry Mama—which we've tested in our lab—works really well for this particular task.

And as for everyone's most-hated chore—vacuuming, of course—Jonathan suggests taking advantage of your vacuum's attachments to help you save time. Not sure which one is best? Consider two of the most common ones: The crevice-dusting combination wand is ideal for reaching tight nooks and crannies (like between couch cushions) or using as a makeshift duster while the extension wand helps you get into those hard-to-reach spaces.

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