I used to think that people who paid others to clean were lazy. Too much money and not enough sense. A nose so high in the air that they’d be too off-balanced to even lift a vacuum cleaner. My mum took on extra work cleaning when I was a teenager. I met her off the school bus at various million-pound houses and failed to understand why their owners didn’t mop their own floors – or fold their own pants. The first part I can now comprehend; the jury’s still out on the latter.
The thing is, we’re all busy. Too busy. A survey of 2,000 British adults found that the majority of people don’t have sufficient time in their weekly schedules to dust and scrub thanks to longer working hours, a desire to maintain a social life, and childcare responsibilities. Despite an ongoing cost of living crisis, the number of UK households who employ cleaners rose a surprising 70 per cent from 2018 to 2023, according to the most recent YouGov poll.
