If your dream hasn’t been triggered by a television home makeover show, making improvements to your home may symbolize making improvements to yourself. Are there any jobs that you feel need to be done right now? Could you do with a coat of paint to brighten yourself up with a fresh new color? If you dream of building an extension, do you want or need to expand your horizons? Putting on a new roof may relate to raising your expectations, whilst applying a coat of varnish or paint can suggest a desire to disguise your own self-perceived flaws. It can also indicate the desire to gloss over problems in a relationship.
Whitewash may represent your attempts to cover up something that causes you embarrassment, whether relating to your own feelings of guilt or your suspicion that others are not what they seem. Clearing or laying down new paths or foundations may relate to new approaches to life.
If household breakages feature in your dream this may represent flawed ideas. A cracked cup can symbolize lost love. A dream of breaking things in the house may suggest anger or despair.
Dreams of housework in general suggest keeping your internal house in order, perhaps by taking time to clarify or define motives, opinions and feelings about others; they also stand for the cleaning out of non-functional or negative attitudes, thoughts and experiences. To dream that you are cleaning your house with a broom or dustpan and brush signifies your need to clear out your thoughts and get rid of old ways. You are seeking self-improvement.
If you, or a cleaner, are cleaning, this may also recall memories of your mother. Alternatively, the house being cleaned may symbolize the self and a need to give extra care and attention to neglected aspects of your personality.
When compared with sweeping up, vacuum cleaning suggests both a definite desire to do away once and for all with the effects of a past action, and a definite desire to move on and put the past behind you.
To dream of cleaning windows suggests that you are trying to get a clearer view of the world around you. Using a washing machine may suggest it is time to confront old issues that are destroying your peace of mind. The water may also point to deep-seated childhood issues that need to come out in the wash. Hanging your clothes out to dry may suggest a yearning for the lost innocence of childhood or a desire for uninhibited sexuality.
If you are washing the dishes in your dream kitchen, this may suggest a desire to wash away feelings of shame or disgust, or a wish to deny responsibility for something.
[1]