housekeeping

[hous-kee-ping]

noun

1. the maintenance of a house or domestic establishment.

2. the management of household affairs.

3. the management, care, and servicing of property and equipment of an industrial or commercial building or organization.

4. the ongoing routine, procedures, operations, and management of a commercial enterprise, government, organization, or the like.

5. Computers.,  system tasks, as initialization and managing peripheral devices, that must be done to permit a computer program to execute properly but that do not directly contribute to program output.

housekeeping

/ ˈhaʊsˌkiːpɪŋ /

noun

1. the running of a household

2. money allocated for the running of a household

3. organization and tidiness in general, as of an office, shop, etc

4. the general maintenance of a computer storage system, including removal of obsolete files, documentation, security copying, etc

Word History and Origins

Origin of housekeeping¹

First recorded in 1530–40; house + keeping

Example Sentences

"I'm including the housekeeping, the janitorial, the booking staff, the maintenance, as well as the consultants, the doctors, the nurses, physios and others," she added.

Read more on BBC

The Post Oak was in the midst of a “pillow transition,” the assistant director of housekeeping explained apologetically—something luxury hotels do roughly every two years—so she wasn’t immediately sure which pillow I’d experienced.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

It’s also exactly what you’d do in wartime if you wanted to remove someone else’s satellite and make it look like housekeeping.

Read more on MarketWatch

Services available to tenants for a fee include personal training and private yoga instruction, dry cleaning pickup and delivery, car washing, dog walking, grocery delivery and housekeeping.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Given that the boat serves excellent food, top-shelf liquor, free Wi-Fi and twice-daily housekeeping, even my modest math skills calculated that this was a very good deal indeed.

Read more on Salon

Related Words

• housework