In my experience, patience and purge patterns are far more effective and less wasteful than head cleans in these situations. Head cleans are usually only useful when you have a genuine clog, and if you have air in the ink lines then a head clean will often only make matters worse.
But if you need to exercise patience after each and every head clean, then that's a real pain. That was what happened to me
[In the last line of my previous post, I meant to say "I hate to sound negative and defeatist ..." not "had".]