6 | www.sp4magazine.co.uk | 01725 511098 | debbie@redfoxpublishing.co.uk
Polish up your
Cleaning Skills
A
cademics, unlike housewives, clearly have too much time on their hands. After a detailed study which took some 15 years, they came to the conclusion that the reason women earn less money than men is that they do more housework. Apparently the 18 per cent difference in earnings between the sexes is mainly caused by women having children and then choosing to spend more time than men on their upbringing. Not to mention the fact that women do the majority of daily household chores - notably cooking, laundry and shopping - according to the Institute for Social and Economic Research. Men, meanwhile, tend to confine themselves to gardening and DIY repairs at weekends. In addition, chores often tackled by women - such as cooking meals - usually have to be done at a set time. “It is likely that the relative inflexibility of housework for women in couples reduces their availability in the labour market,” said the study.
the home. And wives and live-in girlfriends do more than 12 hours of domestic work every week, with destructive results for their careers. So, ladies, the answer clearly is to get that housework done as quickly as possible or hire a cleaner & help. But if you can’t find or afford a good one, the next best thing is to arm yourself with the best cleaning products you can find (often these can be eco-friendly and home-made), an assortment of rubber gloves and cleaning cloths, and set yourself a simple rota of chores. Experts advise you to work room by room, dusting, sweeping and vacuuming from top to bottom to reduce dust between cleaning sessions.
The British Household Panel Study, which followed the same 5,000 families for more than 15 years, found the following:
TV’s Queens of Clean, Kim and Aggie from “How Clean is Your House?” have an assortment of eco-friendly cleaning hints in their Cleaning Bible.
While men do only four or five hours of household work a week, single women put seven hours into cleaning and maintaining
They praise bicarbonate of soda as very much more than a baking ingredient. Mix with a little warm water to make a paste, and they
say this will clean everything from fridges to ovens. (Leave the paste on the oven overnight for sparkling clean!) Clear vinegar is great for getting stains out. Simply mix two parts of water with one part vinegar and leave overnight. Clean lime scale off bathroom showers and taps by soaking in hot vinegar (wrap kitchen roll around taps), and you can even use a vinegar solution to clean the windows. They also recommend soda water for getting red wine stains out of carpets. And try unblocking sinks by pouring down some bicarbonate of soda, followed by some clear vinegar. This solution should fizz and bubble up, and give your pipes a good cleaning out without the use of any harmful chemicals. You can get more useful tips from Kim & Aggie’s Cleaning Bible. But always remember, when handling any cleaning products - especially those containing bleach - protect your hands with rubber gloves.