spend money/time ~ing

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi,

“spend money/time (in) ~ing)”

When the verb spend takes the amount of time or money as an object, it needs a present participle as a complement. (I’m not sure I use right grammar terms, anyway.)

I spent no less than three hours to clear out my wardrobe.

I showed this sentence I made up to a native speaker. He didn’t say anything about this sentence structure. I don’t know- maybe he missed the error. Is this grammatically incorrect? Should I have written ‘I spent no less than three hours clearing out my wardrobe’? What do you think?

Thank you in advance.

2

I think ‘I spent no less than three hours clearing out my wardrobe’ would be better. It’s more natural to hear “spend something (in) doing (sth.)” or “spend something on sth.” than “spend something to do sth”.

3

I agree. I would expect to hear:

spent + time + doing
took + time + to do