I was a professional cleaner. Here are all the things men do wrong

The issue of men and housework is suddenly current, or current again, or current still, thanks to the latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. Has it ever gone away?

This year’s survey found that though the divide of unpaid domestic labour between men and women has not changed significantly in 20 years, what had changed were men’s perceptions. A lot of men believe they do their fair share, while the women in their households (and the data) disagree.

Men do clean, but often don’t do it very well.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

As a former professional cleaner, I tend to fall in between those views: men often do housework – they just don’t do it very well.

Perhaps because men don’t really value housework, their standards are low. Yes, they want credit for doing the washing, but they think nothing of stuffing the washing machine so full, the contents can’t possibly get clean, or packing towels in with clothing, so there is towel lint and soap residue on T-shirts that emerge from the machine still as ripe with body odour as when they went in.

Over the years, I have gone into houses and been proudly handed a basket of such items to hang out to dry (which I did because I was getting paid to), but I had to fight the urge to put the whole load through the wash again.

Yes, I’m stereotyping. No doubt there are women who are pretty ordinary at housework, too. But in my experience, they’re well outnumbered by the blokes. And the women don’t skite about it.

Men think they wash the dishes, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I found a dishcloth draped over the tap that smelled so bad I almost gagged as I consigned it to the bin. Literally rancid. It shouldn’t need saying, but if you’re using a cloth to clean dishes used for eating, make sure the cleaning item is, in fact, clean. This is basic hygiene. Those cloths are little megacities of bacteria.

Then there’s the kitchen’s great labour-saving device: the dishwasher. Unlike the washing machine, this appliance should be foolproof – it actually has little racks and slots and compartments to separate the items and prevent overloading, so you’d think you wouldn’t have the problems encountered in the laundry.

Not so.

Apart from the uncanny male ability to overload the dishwasher, it has one component that needs attention at least once a week, but which men seem to find far too mysterious to worry about at all: the filter. I will not disturb you with the details of what I’ve found in dishwasher filters over the years, except to say that the whole chicken drumstick I once discovered was not at all unusual.

Likewise, the vacuum cleaner needs not only to be used, but also regularly emptied.

And fellas, the brush that sits beside the toilet is there for a purpose. It needs to be used! Please.

I didn’t always clean houses. My career of cleaning up after people began in aged care when, at age 15, I was employed in a nursing home kitchen as a “dish pig”. I worked for a (male) chef whose sense of hygiene was, well, dubious. Perhaps he would have been cleaner had he been sober, but I had no way of ever knowing.

From the kitchen, I graduated to the laundry and sluice room – also known as the “bedpan room”, which had all the attractions the name implies.

From there, working in people’s homes looked like a step-up. The pay was better, and I was my own boss, but in terms of sheer grunge, there was surprisingly little between them.

Though I’ve now moved on from cleaning men’s domestic messes, as the HILDA survey attests, the problem is still there.

So, aside from the tasks already mentioned, I offer the following tips in the hope they help, if not the men who read them, then at least their frustrated female partners:

• Cleaning can’t be ad hoc – get organised.
• Pay attention to showers, floors, bathrooms.
• The equipment you use must start off as clean as the intended result.
• Make it a habit to wipe down the sink after washing the dishes – with a clean dish cloth.

And finally, I must mention the British raconteur Quentin Crisp, who famously said: “There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”

Please, do not follow this advice.

Jacqueline Wilson no longer cleans houses for a living. She is a criminologist researching institutionalisation and state wardship.

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