Why the cleaning tips?

It must be said that the art of household management is not popular, sexy or appreciated.  Every day we are bombarded with media and cultural messages that tell us that time is too precious to waste on cleaning.  Phrases like, "just a housewife," and "only a cleaner" combine with magazine images of perfect women giving us advice on how to raise children, have a career and fit in gruelling hours at the gym to present the idea that cleaning is beneath us.  I have yet to see a "perfect man doing house, jobs, kids and image" style article despite the fact that many men do just that.

This has lead to two problems.  Most importantly it has made it culturally acceptable to pay cleaners a pittance and secondly it has lead to stay at home adults being written out of the economic structure of the country.  Housework doesn't count as a skill to be proud of because an adult that stays at home to look after relatives, do the cleaning, cook the meals isn't paying tax.  They are not contributing to the economy  by paying tax so they are fair game to be victimised as lazy scroungers.

Well personally I would like to see every cleaner and bin man on the City of Westminster go on strike.  If the powers that be had to live with mucky toilets and smelly, over flowing waste they might start to value the people that clean up after them.  If there was no pharmacist to run to with their cold symptoms they might start to value the power of a home made hot toddy.  If the low paid kitchen staff all got flue they might start to realize how long it takes to make a fully balanced meal from scratch every day.

I am not advocating strike action but I am suggesting that we need to start thinking about our own home skills as important.  We should value those skills because each and every skill we have means that we are able to do something for ourselves.  The economic system wants and indeed relies on us buying ready prepared food, buying expensive and harmful cleaning chemicals that will make our lives easier, wants us to spend, spend, spend on the latest gadget to make our lives easier.  In the process this creates job, pays tax to the government that we all benefit from.

It also makes us dependent on companies that move those precious jobs to other countries.  It makes us need big multinationals that peddle harmful cleaning chemicals under one name and soothing hand creams under another.

Worse that all of this though, it gives the impression that some basic human skills are not important, not needed and the people that employ those skills for the good of others can be ignored, paid badly and generally undervalued or forgotten.

This post was not meant to sound so political but actually I think a lot of this needs to be said.  If you find a job smelly or unpleasant then you should pay someone a lot of money to do it for you.

I don't like cleaning so I am prepared to spend time planning ways in which to make cleaning easier, quicker and cheaper.  You make sure your phone and internet link are efficient.  I think the same about keeping my house clean.

Please note, my house is not a sparkling clean palace,it looks like kids live there, with a crazy craft lady and a man with too many computer cables lying around.
 There is dust, clutter and unwanted stuff, it is a work in progress. To keep your sanity you need to steer well clear of pictures of perfect houses and regard your home as a home and not a furniture advertisement.