How four words transformed my home

Because I'm that weak-minded.

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I was watching a video of the influencer Mrs Hinch scrubbing her sink when I realised something incredible. She was enjoying herself. It had never occurred to me that cleaning and tidying could be in any way pleasurable. It was like watching someone relishing having kidney stones or being kidnapped or sitting in a circle with new people waiting to say their name and one fact about them.

This was big news to me. The only time I ever properly cleaned was in a mad panic during the two days before anybody visited. As a result, things got so bad during lockdown that I found my two-year-old trying to clean a mirror. As if he’d thought, I can’t live like this anymore. He acted like he’d been caught injecting heroin into the dog.  Like cleaning is something naughty that we just don’t do in this house. So I stopped doing the laundry and cooking to see if he’d take over that as well.

Some time later I had an awkward encounter with a new mum friend who was telling me about a blog she was reading that promised to help you cut your cleaning down to 45 minutes.

I laughed and said, “That would involve me doing more cleaning as I only do about 30 minutes a week!”

Which is when she told me she meant cut it down to 45 minutes a day. I was both stunned that anybody was doing this much and mortified. And had to make a joke about living in squalor while I saw her mentally making a memo to never ever go round my house or eat anything I’d baked.

I had wondered why my house was so unclean. But it’s not just the cleaning I hate. I just get so annoyed that you make the effort to do it and then a few days later, it’s dirty again.

And I don’t understand where a lot of the dirt comes from. In my head, there is no reason why a shower would ever need to be cleaned as it’s only used for washing. There’s just water being splashed on it and then some soap and then more water. It’s self-cleaning. I feel the same way about towels. They are only used to dry clean water from a clean body so why do they need washing?

Willing to admit that I’m wrong, I had a look at this time-saving blog I’d been told about. There was a list of daily and weekly tasks. On the weekly list was the instruction to empty crumbs from the toaster tray. In the 8 years I’d lived in my current flat I had not done this once. I felt like the Joseph Fritzl of the breadcrumbs world. And have since been too frightened to even look in there. What if they’ve mutated into some kind of crumb beast?

Another weekly job was to vacuum your mattress. Why is everyone getting such a dusty mattress when there’s a sheet covering it and a duvet? I don’t have sheets like sieves. It was all bewildering.

So I gave up and instead decided to do a comfort Google search for information about how an over-sanitised home weakens your immune system and gives your kids allergies. When this theory came out in the Nineties, I found it very reassuring. But I soon discovered that the worst had happened. It has been debunked! Scientists are now saying that the bugs found in a home are not the ones that can be beneficial. (Although to that I say, you haven’t seen my home.)

This was a terrible blow. It had been the one justification I’d been clinging to. So what I did was this. Nothing. Until, one day I was listening to Professor Steve Peters, the mindset doctor, on the Diary of a CEO podcast. He was talking about people getting stuck in an idea of who they think they are but that this can easily be changed. He gave the example of a messy person. When faced with a mess they would shrug and think, I’m a messy person, and do nothing about it. But what you should do is say to yourself ‘I’m a tidy person’.

That sounds interesting, I thought. And also ridiculous. Like this is going to work! You’re going to have to do better than that Prof! But I humoured him by trying it once. I saw a scrunched-up old plaster on the floor. Normally I’d tell myself that I’ll deal with it later in such a convincing way that I’d believe it to be true. This time I used those four words, I’m a tidy person. And then guess what. I picked it up. And now I think I actually am a tidy person and my home is much better.

This has been going on for months. It works. And it’s pathetic that it works. This is how susceptible I am. I can change a whole aspect of myself with one short sentence. If there are any cults that want to brainwash me, get in touch. I’ll be their easiest victim ever. And I’ll keep their compound absolutely pristine.