I have a very useful book written by a man: Don Aslett, Is there life after housework. It has really useful and clever ideas for saving time and being more effective and efficient in cleaning the house. I also have a sign in a frame on my mantlepiece which says "Dull women have immaculate houses" which means for me that there is more to life than housework, only I have taken it to a slightly more extreme level than normal.

On the subject of men and cleaning, though, I heard a quote which I have been testing out by observation for some time, and it seems to hold fairly true in my experience: "(A lot of) men expect to be thanked for doing housework because they consider it to be 'helping out' their wives/partners".   In other words, a lot of men still have the (mistaken) idea that housework is the sole responsibility of women. (I welcome your comments on this, everyone.) :-)

The reason I am paying a housecleaner is that I recognise my natural inclination to do anything but housework, and my other natural inclination to collect clutter, especially paper-based clutter. Also, for the last 10 years I have been financially stressed to the max, but now, finally we both have well-paying work and I want my house in some sort of order, and I really need to use my house-cleaning energies on sorting and getting rid of excess stuff so paying a cleaner helps me with achieving the bigger goal of "getting my house in order" physically and mentally/psychologically.

PoppaGator said "He does live with a woman.......so I think we should assume that their home is at least minimally civilized." My hubby lives with me but the two of us are, by nature, just about the worst housekeepers I've ever met. Well no, I take that back, I have seen worse, but I mean within the statistically normal range.

WYSIWYG, I think that Bobert was passing a general comment on what he sees as the "illogicality" of women, but he is respecting P-Vine by asking this as a gently humourous question. He's not bitching, in my observation.

Since my friend started cleaning up for me I can't find lots of the things in boxes she stacked in the corner of my office, but I am gradually sorting them and chucking stuff out. What I have wanted to do for years and didn't have time o motivation.

I had a cleaner about 20 years ago who used to chuck things in the garbage. It took me a while to realise I had to sort through the garbage after I left. The worst thing she chucked out was one sleeve of a dress I was fixing. Why just one sleeve? And my carefully handwritten recipes. It was a communication problem because my flatmate was the go-between. I chucked her out not long after that because she was deliberately stirring up trouble among my friends and I suspect she was doing that with the cleaner too.

Rita/Ferrara - what is is about whiskers all over the sink? Why does my hubby trim his beard and leave it all over the sink, clogging up the drain hole? I just don't get that at all.

Helen