YOUR CUT-OUT GUIDE TO A HEALTHIER HOME

undiluted form. When i was growing up there was no such thing as anti-bacterial spray. My motherin-law has reached the age of 89 never using the stuff, and neither did my own late mother, despite an immune system compromised by cancer and its treatments.

Over 25 years she endured at least three or four bouts of chemotherapy and she never doused her home in chemicals, preferring to just be a little more careful than normal and ask anyone with a cold or cough to stay away.

So how did we get to a place where people are more afraid of being killed by germs than global warming? One woman tweeted me to say she puts a cupful of disinfectant down her toilet every night and another said she washes her hands with a squidge of bleach at least once a day.

What do these people think is going to happen to them? the only times you need to wash your hands are after you’ve been to the loo, before food and if you’ve picked up dog poo. i’m lucky enough to have a lovely laundry room in my home, with a shelf of cleaning products, but these consist of environmentally friendly basics like bicarbonate of soda and vinegar.

i pop half a lemon in the dishwasher if i want my house to smell nice and i’ve banned plastic containers of hand soap.

instead i remember that surgeons wash their hands in hot water and soap.

So i’m calling on all influencers — particularly the young — to denounce these toxic chemicals with their over-reliance on plastic.

if you wouldn’t put it in your fish tank, don’t put it down the drain.

And please don’t wash your hands in bleach!