The Big Clean Up With Dettol

There are five people in our family. Four of us don't care about the state of the kitchen and bathroom. Add to that the fact that it is Winter, with bouts of the sniffles going round school, work and kindergarten and you can imagine that we have a reasonably-sized germ population in the house. 

Hygiene is not in the children's vocabulary. Not in English. Not in German. While neither The Bavarian nor I grew up in the kind of sterile households some people keep, I do think that a little bit of a germ-killing scrub of the kitchen and bathroom surfaces is in order from time to time. 

When I was asked recently to try out a few of Dettol's range of wipes and sprays, I knew we'd really be able to put them to the test. And so we did.

During the Summmer I brought my lovely white tray table out to the garden. It was so handy to have out there. But then Autumn came and we spent a bit less time outside. The table got forgotton and when I finally remembered it, it was in need of a serious clean. 

The Tray Table In The Garden

In true 1980s detergent TV advert style, let me reveal to you the cleaning power of Dettol all purpose cleaners.

I was pretty impressed with the results on the tray. So I decided to put the tougher of the two sprays to the ultimate test - cleaning the dried on food off the high chair. Number Three's high chair had not been cleaned in a week in preparation for this. Food crumbs had been brushed away, but squashed banana, mashed vegetables, gravy dribbles and porridge had been left to dry and harden.

Normally I take the blade for cleaning the ceramic hob to the high chair when it needs a thorough cleaning. This time I sprayed it with Dettol spray and left it for three minutes. One wipe with a warm, damp cloth and the chair was clean. I was pretty speechless. I never knew that cleaning a high chair could be this easy! I am a convert. My elbow grease days are over. From now on I will live the life of a TV detergent ad housewife. 


[Disclaimer: I was asked to test and review some Dettol products and was provided with the above-mentioned products free of charge in exchange for writing a review. All photos and all opinions expressed here are my own.]

Faking A Clean House

We all know how hard it is to have both a clean house and a family of small children. But don't despair. There is a life hack for this. Here's how to fake a clean house:

1. Hoover the hall stairs and landing.
2. Throw any clutter into an empty laundry basket.
3. Close all doors that lead off the hall, stairs and landing.
4. Hide the now full laundry basket somewhere like your bedroom, where visitors are unlikely to be.
5. If there is a mirror in your hall, polish it.
6. Clean the kitchen table, wipe it and put a bowl of fruit or vase of flowers (a small drinking glass witha few daisies in it will suffice) in the centre. 
7. Sweep the kitchen floor. 

Gaze at your clean-but-lived-in looking home, clap yourself on the back and hope that someone, if only the postman, calls before it reverts to the usual chaotic mess.

The Mental Health Benefits of Doing Your Own Housework

To get a cleaning lady or not? How many of us have asked ourselves this question. Well I've decided against it and I'll tell you why. It has nothing to do with having a stranger in the house or having to clean before she comes and it is irrelevant that with the mess the children make it just isn't worth it. My not hiring a cleaner is my way of staying sane. 

My mother once said that people underestimate the mental health benefits of doing your own housework. At the time I wasn't sure what she meant, but over the years, as I've had my own children, bought a house and continue to work in a challenging job, I can see what she means.

In the world we live in nowadays you can buy everything you need - a childminder, a cleaner, get your car valeted, order meals in or eat out, bring your clothes to the cleaners and have your shirts ironed by a professional. 

This leaves us with time. But time does not equal happiness or satisfaction nor does it leave us mentally balanced. Working at a desk job, as so many of us do, we have nothing tangible to show for what we have spent the day doing. Our project may have made progress, our profit may have increased, but we can't see that or hold it in our hands. Without manual tasks we lack the satisfaction of physically seeing a job well done. A carpenter sees the bench he has crafted and can sit on it. A builder can walk into the house he has built. But a data entry officer, a project manager, an employee in HR, a bus driver or a waitress doesn't have that at the end of the day. 

But with cleaning, you can see immediate results. You do something and straight away you have enhanced the situation. You have created something that wasn't there earlier that day - a clean bathroom, a hoovered carpet, a washed window, a sparkling mirror. 

Next time you bleach the tea stains off the kitchen sink, descale the kettle, mop the floor or wipe babyfood off the high chair, take a moment to look at the result. Think of what it looked like moments before. Appreciate that you did this. You made this difference. It is unspectacular but tangible, an improvement and it is all down to you.

How to Be Lazy and Still Be Organised

One thing people always say about me is that I am very organised. (Hopefully that won't be what they write on my headstone). "Where do you find the time?" is a question I am often asked by colleagues and friends. My standard answer to date has been "Eh, I dunno". Lately I started to take a closer look at my life to identify why I have time where others don't seem to and I came to a couple of conclusions. The main ones are that 
a. I am lazy about things I don't enjoy
b. I work efficiently on the things that have to be done in order to allow myself time for the things I really enjoy.

Anyone who knows me a bit will have read a. above and will now be thinking to themselves "Liar. She is anything but lazy". Anyone who knows me really well (The Bavarian, for example) will be thinking "Spot on". I'll give you a few examples to highlight what I mean. Our bathroom get cleaned when it is borderline filthy or when visitors are coming to stay overnight. Our floors get washed so little, that it almost has novelty value. My middle son has a toy sweeping brush. The only explanation I can find for him wanting to have one is that he thinks it is something you only take out on special occasions and hence must be very precious. 

Here are my top tips for efficient running of the household:

Use separate laundry baskets for the different washes
I don't mind putting a load into the washing machine but I detest rooting through dirty washing to separate colours, darks and whites. Since having children and discovering the joy of wee'd in jammies, pooed on undies and milk encrusted muslins I hate this task even more. So I put a stop to it. Our bathroom now boasts no fewer than three pop-up net laundry baskets - one white, one black and one blue. It is a quick, cheap and fool-proof way to organise your laundry and cut out unnecessary sorting. When the kids undress for bed, they know that vests go in the white basket, dark trousers in the black one and anything colourful in the blue one. At one glance I can see which basket is the fullest and know then which wash needs to be done next.  

Use the night
I try to let the night work for me. From using the timer on washing machine to letting yeast dough prove overnight in the fridge, I arrange for all manner of things to be ready when I get up. Often I will set the table at night. Within the last five minutes before going to bed, I grab the plates, bowls, spoons, knives, glasses and cups and plonk them into the middle of the table. Then the breadboard, bread (covered), jam and cereal jar are placed beside them. Out with the light and off to bed I go.
The coffee machine wakes at 6.45 am, providing me with a nice hot brew when I drag myself downstairs at five to seven. The table is pretty much set. I just have to grab butter, milk and yogurt from the fridge before yelling up the stairs "Breakfast is ready".
Once breakfast is done, I can unload the washing machine, having filled it the evening before and set the timer for the wash to be finished at 7.30 am.

At weekends I quite often make a sweet yeast dough after dinner. This takes ten minutes all in all. The dough rises overnight in the fridge. In the morning it can be turned into a plaited bread, raisin rolls or cinnamon twists within an hour of getting up.

Keep sports / hobby bags packed
We go swimming quite a bit, so we have one big swimming bag for the whole family. It contains a couple of €2 coins for the lockers, a hairbrush, a couple of nappies and swimming nappies for Number 3, water wings for Number 2, suncream (for the outdoor pool in summer), swimming togs for me, The Bavarian, Number 1 and Number 2 as well as five towels. After a visit to the pool, all the togs and towels go straight to the washing machine. After drying, they get put straight back in the bag. 
We came up with this plan after spending several Sunday mornings searching for everything we need and ending up in foul humour when we were finally ready to leave the house. Now we use the same ready-packed bag principle for Number 1's football gear and Number 2's music class bag. 

Forget about keeping the place clean
I am not naturally a person who keeps order and I feel that quite keenly since I live in Germany. I used to try to keep the house tidy and clean, but eventually I realised that I was just putting undue pressure on myself and irritating the family.  There would be cries of "You tidied away the Lego I was building with" and "Where is the Star Wars battle I set up yesterday?" from the boys. The Bavarian could never find his sunglasses or work bag because I would move them from the highly unsuitable place he'd put them. 
For the past couple of years I have been operating on the principle of cleaning up messes and only messes. Untidiness gets ignored. The level of satisfaction I get from taking a room from the looks-like-a-bomb-hit-it state to the did-we-hire-a cleaner? state is incredible. So mostly our house looks like this:

And very occasionally like this: