I MUST admit I am no Kim and Aggie when it comes to cleaning.
My living room is hoovered every day, and throughout every week, but I’m afraid nothing is pulled out and gone under, except with a duster on a stick, because everything is too heavy to shift - crammed full to overflowing with collectables from my “investing for the future” period and other unused tat that might come in one day.
Knowing my luck they won’t be worth a carrot now as tastes for antiques have changed and the move has been to minimalism. I like my place tidy - but homely too.
As for the idea of spring cleaning forget it, that’s now an all year round activity.
According to a survey by cleaning giants Vileda houseproud Brits spend 658 days of their lifetime cleaning their homes.
That’s a whopping 15,782 hours with dusters, mops and vacuum cleaners in our hands by the time we reach retirement age – an average of 6.07 hours every week! How do they work that out?
It claims the people behind the push for domestic cleanliness are the country’s teenagers, who have proved to be cleaner than their parents. Teenagers clean for 6.62 hours a week compared to the 5.93 hours dedicated to domestic chores by their parents every seven days.
And pigs might fly.
The task the 3,000 people who took part dread most is ...dah - dah - dah - cleaning windows Now that’s true as far as I am concerned. I must be the world’s worst. I’ve tried everything from vin egar and newspaper to the professional window cleamer’s scraper and they always end up more streaky when I’ve done them than when I started.
I have resorted to blasting them with a hose pipe.
There are, as always, exceptions to the rule. The survey did reveal that an incredible fifth of people have gone an entire month without lifting a finger.
If that’s what they want.
As the well know phrase or saying goes - life’s too short to stuff a mushroom.
The secret of cleaning apparently is to have the right tools for the right job and doing a little often.
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