🗓️ Idiom: Clean House (v)
💬 Meaning
- To remove or replace people, systems, or policies that are not working well.
- It means making big internal changes to improve performance or start fresh.
🧠 Example Sentences
- After the company’s poor performance, the new CEO decided to clean house.
- The IT department cleaned house and removed outdated software tools.
- When a new manager arrives, it’s common to clean house and bring in fresh ideas.
🏛️ Origin
The phrase comes from literally cleaning a house. Throwing out what’s unnecessary or harmful. In business, it refers to removing staff, processes, or systems that no longer help the company succeed.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
After several failed projects, upper management chose to __________ and restructure the whole department.
Answer
clean house
2. Choose the correct meaning of “clean house”:
A) Organize the office space
B) Promote existing staff
C) Remove or replace people and systems
D) Hire a cleaning company
Answer
C) Remove or replace people and systems
3. Rewrite the sentence using the idiom:
“The company removed several managers and started fresh with a new team.” → Change the sentence using: clean house
Answer
The company cleaned house and started fresh with a new team.
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