Opinion

Anita Robinson: Some people love cleaning their homes, I'm not one of them

Hollywood starlet, Joan Collins has been showing off her cleaning skills on social media amid the coronavirus outbreak. Picture: Joan Collins Instagram
Hollywood starlet, Joan Collins has been showing off her cleaning skills on social media amid the coronavirus outbreak. Picture: Joan Collins Instagram Hollywood starlet, Joan Collins has been showing off her cleaning skills on social media amid the coronavirus outbreak. Picture: Joan Collins Instagram

When the Loving Spouse and I built the new house, I had big notions. My aim – to create an air of spacious graciousness by carpeting throughout in a single colour.

In retrospect, perhaps pale grey wasn’t the wisest choice, what with people insisting on walking on it and spilling red wine. We were never done hoovering and stain removing. A life-lesson learned.

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Our faithful old vacuum cleaner had a nervous breakdown before dying prematurely of exhaustion and overuse. A replacement was called for. Never let a man out alone to buy a vacuum cleaner. (A second life-lesson learned.)

The Loving Spouse came home starry-eyed, dragging a hefty lump of a machine with a deafening high-pitched whine, many attachments, a shampooing facility and a mind of its own. I could barely lift it. It took an instant dislike to me – and the feeling was mutual.

Privately, I christened it ‘The Brute’. Still, it shifted the responsibility off my puny shoulders and the Loving Spouse seemed happy enough wielding it around the house, while I listened with gritted teeth to its various brush-heads whanging off the skirting-boards and knocking lumps out of the chair-legs. I followed like a casualty nurse with woodstain and an artist’s paintbrush repairing the damage.

Anita Robinson
Anita Robinson Anita Robinson

When the Loving Spouse went to his heavenly reward, I spent a few exhausting months dragging The Brute round the house like a ball and chain, to the detriment of my replacement hip-joints, until I saw sense and engaged a cleaning lady.

What a gem she turned out to be. The bonus was, she brought all her own cleaning materials, including a vacuum cleaner, and went through the house like the White Tornado, leaving it gleaming and fragrant.

Alas, the honeymoon is over. Like everyone else, I’m in crisis mode, self-isolating and sitting like Miss Havisham in increasing grime and gloom, conscience pricked daily by newspaper articles and television programmes all on the same topic – ‘How to Deep Clean Your House’. “It’ll soothe your stress,” promises one, “and help fight the virus.” Only one of these statements is true.

From Aggie MacKenzie to Mrs Hinch, via a slew of lesser-known ‘queens of clean’, I’m driven mad by their passionate belief in vinegar and lemons as cleaning agents. Vinegar’s for chips; lemons are for gin and the day I attack my grouting with bicarbonate of soda and an old toothbrush is the day I’ll stick my spoon in the wall.

In the sad cupboard under the futility room sink I have a variety of five-year-old chemical cleaners, whose eye-watering pungency reassure me they’re still effective. Nowt for it but to don a pinny and begin.

I decided to close the door of any room not in daily use and forget about it for the foreseeable future. This is called the long finger approach. I open the internal door to the garage in search of implements. The squeegee mop’s spongy head is hard as a house-brick and perished, the floor brush’s bristles permanently flattened, the duster basket visible but inaccessible behind a wall of boxes.

I notice Mr Sheen’s looking a bit rusty about the collar. Out of the corner of my eye I spot The Brute, squatting and staring at me like a baleful toad, as if it knows its days in solitary confinement are about to end. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I snarl and slam the door.

Cleaning experts recommend beginning with something not too taxing. The secret is apparently to do a little every day, devoting an hour perhaps to a particular task.

In a rash move I evacuate the hot press of all its towels. (I know this is neither ‘cleaning’ nor necessary, but easily done, since most of them fall out on my head every time I open the door.) I heap them into a pyramid.

Now then – roll, or fold? Paralysed by indecision, I return to the living room with fresh cup of coffee, some chocolate biscuits and watch ‘Monarch of the Glen’.

As Scarlett O’Hara so succinctly put it, “Tomorrow is another day….”