A prime candidate for secular canonisation – and a personal hero of mine – is Frances Gabe. She was a visionary, a terrible neighbour (she antagonised hers with a succession of snarling great danes and a penchant for nude DIY) and the inventor of the self-cleaning home. Gabe, who died in 2016 at 101, transformed her Oregon bungalow into a “giant dishwasher”, with a system of sprinklers, air dryers and drains, plus self-cleaning sinks, bath and toilet. “Housework is a thankless, unending job,” Gabe said. “Who wants it? Nobody!”
I agree with Gabe – and with Lenin, who condemned housework as “barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery”. My own objections are mainly founded in sloth and a vague desire to stick it to the man, but for others housework can be difficult, or even impossible.
“We’ve tied cleanliness to morality for so long that it’s difficult to see that there are reasons people may have a hard time keeping tidy besides being lazy,” says Rachel Hoffman, the author of Unfuck Your Habitat: You’re Better Than Your Mess. “If someone has mental illness, disabilities, trauma or chronic health issues, the usual suggestions of how to keep a clean home can be completely out of reach.”
Many can’t and plenty more don’t want to clean. But are we any closer to making Gabe’s utopia a reality? If not, can we make the perpetual grind less arduous? I tried to find out.
Dust
Dust is inescapable: after all, it is mainly – or at least partly, depending on whom you ask – skin. “I don’t believe any amount of exfoliating in the shower is going to stop our clothes and bedding also exfoliating us,” says Kate de Selincourt, a writer on sustainability and health in buildings. Some household dust is worse, she notes: it can contain toxic flame retardants from fabric, weedkiller residue from city pavements, microplastics and other delights.
Could your home be less dusty? Possibly. Mechanical ventilation heat recovery (MVHR) might help. Designed as an environmentally friendly method of heating and ventilating homes, MVHR provides fresh air while conserving heat, but it also filters air on entry, stopping some exterior dirt from getting in. “Standard filters – G4 – can filter out larger particles such as insects, fine hair, flying seeds and other airborne debris,” says Chayley Collis of the Green Building Store.
Users can choose a finer F7 filter, which also excludes smaller particles, including pollen. MVHR can eliminate some internally generated dust, too, since it is continuously extracting air. “For example, in a bathroom, when we shake a towel, dust is disturbed off the surfaces and often towel lint is released into the air. Some of this will be extracted by the MVHR system,” says Collis, although heavier particles just fall back to the floor.
How effectively an MVHR system – usually quoted at £1,500 to £3,000 for a “normal” home – limits dust depends on how airtight your home is: gaping windows or doors make it far less effective. For a more lo-tech approach, De Selincourt recommends a shoes‑off policy and “plenty of doormats, ideally ones you can hose down”.
Robots
It is 2022. Elon Musk can fly a car to Mars, or something. Can’t I just jab my phone and get a clean house? Almost. Robot vacuum cleaners are a reality – I have had a Roomba since 2006. It is an angry, battered, much‑repaired little warhorse that roars around, banging into things at arbitrary times of the day and night, swallowing cables, being confounded by rug tassels and demanding I deal with its “brush cage”. Despite this, I love it: it vacuums my floor with almost no intervention from me; the dream.
“We knew people wanted a cleaning robot, because they would tell us,” says Colin Angle, the CEO of the US company iRobot, which makes Roomba. “It was: ‘Good to meet you, Colin, when are you going to clean my floor?’ There was no genius required.”
Even so, Roomba was 12 years in the making. It uses technology developed for mine clearance to ensure coverage, and keeps costs (relatively) low with knowhow developed during a failed foray into robot toys. The engineers voted to call their creation the Cybersuck. Angle refused. “I get full credit for a moment of wisdom.”
Although the UK remains resistant (a distribution issue, according to Angle), Roomba is one of the rare appliances to achieve cultural artefact status. It has inspired a melancholy vacuum’s eyeview Twitter account (@selfawareRoomba) and appeared in viral pet videos and sitcoms (Parks and Recreation’s DJ Roomba), while the tale of the one that recently “escaped” from a Cambridge Travelodge moved even a Roomba-sceptic nation. I think it is because they feel oddly … alive? Infuriating or endearing, it is impossible to remain indifferent to your tiny housemate.
“The personification is powerful,” says Angle. “Within two weeks, 90% of people have given their Roomba a name or use Roomba as if it were its name.” (Ours is Noo Noo, after the Teletubbies’ vacuum.) When he took calls for the helpline in the early days, customers would refuse to relinquish their defective robots for exchange, demanding first aid for their family member.
iRobot sends me its latest app‑enabled robot butler, the j7+, to try. It is definitely better at cleaning and more discreet than my whirring anarchist: there is much less bumping into things, thanks to the new algorithms, and you can choose to let it use your phone’s GPS or speak to other smart devices to work out when everyone is out and start cleaning then. It is also needier: after each “mission”, you can give the robot feedback, with options including “It didn’t need my help” and “It respected my home”.
Noo Noo 2, as we call the sleek interloper, also shows me photographs of obstacles it has encountered (socks, shoes, bags), asking whether it should avoid them permanently or if they are temporary (it is always option one here, robot chum). The tech has evolved to recognise and steer clear of cables, earbuds and even – the nightmare scenario – dog poo. “We actually gathered thousands of pictures of dog poop and made physical and digital models of dog poop – all the glory of hi-tech wizardry,” says Angle. “We’re so confident, we actually guarantee against your Roomba hitting dog poop.”
Has the servile j7+ – quiet, respectful, responsive, learning – lost some of the original Roomba’s wild poetic soul? Maybe. Could I get used to it? Oh yes.
Robots can also mop: iRobot’s Braava uses the same technological bells and whistles as the vacuum, but it is quieter, slinking eerily around, clicking discreetly. My husband sets it up to follow the Roomba and it feels as if a phalanx of household staff are doing our bidding – the closest we will ever come to feeling like tech billionaires.
Our floors are much cleaner, but the Braava is not fuss-free. Unless you use single-use versions (available, but hardly eco-friendly) you need to rinse the mop pad after use. It also sends plaintive messages asking me to fill its tank, but I don’t care about floor cleanliness enough to respond often. If robots could compare notes, this one would be complaining to Noo Noo about the month it spent begging me to charge it daily, while sitting mere inches from its charging point. Let’s hope they can’t.
Domestic robots feel like the future, but they come at a serious price: £899 for the j7+; £699 for the Braava. An entry-level Roomba starts at £269. They don’t have all the answers, either: like Daleks, they are defeated by stairs. I check Angle isn’t working on a stair‑cleaning vacuum. “I’ve made many robots that can climb stairs,” he says. “You just don’t want to pay for it.”
Hair
I receive a heartfelt plea to investigate the hair problem from a household of multiple dogs and long-haired women; I wish I had better news for them. Oxo’s drain protector does come highly recommended if plughole hair is your bugbear, though. Personally, I am with the cleaning expert Aggie MacKenzie, who says: “I get quite excited by unblocking it, pulling it up and the whole great big ball coming up. Totally disgusting.” If all cleaning were as grossly satisfying, I might do more.
Elsewhere, there is no magic bullet that does not involve buzzcuts for all, but MacKenzie is a fan of Bissell stick vacuums for hairy situations. “I promise you no hair gets caught in the brush; it’s a miracle.”
I wonder about matching upholstery to your pet’s fur, but Louise Wicksteed of the interior design firm Sims Hilditch doesn’t recommend this. “A Martindale ‘rub count’ [the rating system that assesses fabric durability] of more than 18,000 should stop it from becoming tatty and snagged by your pet’s claws,” she advises. “Get parcel tape, wrap it around your hand and just kind of dab your hand on the sofa,” says MacKenzie. “It’s quite enjoyable.” And you could do it sitting down, I suggest, hopefully. “Kind of, yes.” She doesn’t sound convinced.
Window grime
I hate cleaning windows – I can never eliminate every smear. Can technology help? Outside, yes. Self-cleaning glass exists – and you can install it at home. Pilkington produces Active, a coated glass. “The coating works in two ways,” says its UK marketing manager, Leo Pyrah. “It’s photocatalytic, so it takes UV energy from daylight and the coating reacts to break down and loosen organic dirt.”
The coating is also hydrophilic, which means it stops droplets forming when it rains, so “the water spreads out evenly”. It is 20% more expensive than normal glass and not something you can use indoors – yet. “We have been doing research on using UV lamps to activate the coating,” says Pyrah, but there is no imminent replacement for elbow grease, or, in my case, ignoring grease.
Hiding
If cleaning is too much, can camouflage help? When it comes to hiding dirt, ditch minimalism: pattern is your friend. There is a reason those English country houses full of labradors go heavy on the chintz. The interior designer Irene Gunter of Gunter & Co says that needn’t mean over-the-top florals: you can get a forgiving effect with subtle variations in tone and texture.
She also avoids painted walls – “a real pain in the butt” – as marks on even the most aspirational heritage emulsion are hard to remove cleanly. In heavy-use areas such as kitchens and hallways, she recommends easy-to-maintain, wipeable wood panelling or vinyl wallpapers.
Similarly, less-than-immaculate floors look better with texture. Wood is good, because it has “grain and life”. Avoid tiles that are “like a piece of paper, super flat,” Gunter suggests; pick something with a variety of shades, even of the same colour. “If you’ve got a bit of dust or a raisin lying on the floor, it doesn’t shout out at you.”
Darker isn’t necessarily better, according to Wicksteed: “A common misconception is that a dark floor colour will hide dirt more effectively; this is particularly true when using dark stone to disguise a pet’s muddy pawprints.” But dirt is often lighter-coloured and mud dries paler than people expect. She recommends lighter-coloured limestone, which is more forgiving at hiding “tell-tale signs of animals around the house”.
Match your grouting to your tiles, advises Gunter. If it needs to be pale, persuade your tiler to use harder-wearing epoxy grouting. “I don’t need to worry that in six months’ time I’m going to have to sit on the floor with a toothbrush,” she says, conjuring a scenario as unlikely for me as unaided flight.
When all else fails, deploy the dimmers. “Lighting is about adding atmosphere and making it cosy, not about creating a sterile environment,” says Gunter. Beware claims of “soft white” bulbs, she warns, and appealingly warm pictures, which could be Photoshopped. Check the box: “You need to make sure it’s 2,700 Kelvin.”
Hacks
The self-cleaning home remains a distant dream, but there are ways to make housework feel less overwhelming. For Debora Robertson, the author of Declutter: The Get Real Guide to Creating Calm from Chaos, a clutter-free home is a simpler place to clean and live. “Paring back means you never have to clean, mend, polish or dust those things again.”
Hoffman recommends “a mindset shift. Stop thinking of cleaning as a huge undertaking and starting thinking of it as a series of small, ongoing tasks you can mould and fit around your life. You can clean a room in one- to five-minute intervals, repeated over time.” She is also an advocate for asking for help – from friends or family if professional help isn’t feasible. “There’s a really interesting phenomenon where people have trouble keeping their own messes tidy, but can help someone else with theirs.”
What makes the biggest difference for the least effort? Robertson is “obsessed” with airing rooms. “It’s the quickest improvement you can make. Throw windows open for at least 10 minutes every day and it’s instantly fresher.” Hammond finds clearing flat surfaces – tables, shelves, desks – disproportionately helpful. “It can make a huge visual difference.” Another easy win is making the bed: “Beds take up a lot of real estate in a room, so a neat bed can make everything else feel tidier, even if it’s not.”
My favourite advice, though, is MacKenzie’s. “Don’t move around the house at all. Every time you move, you’re shedding dead skin cells and hair. Just stand still in one place.” Finally, cleaning advice I am confident I can follow.
