PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE

This cuts down drastically the amount of dust and dirt brought indoors, which will reduce your cleaning time.

No dogs or cats on the sofa or chairs. Their hair gathers in every nook and cranny of soft furnishings and is a pest to remove.

Eat at a table. Munching on the sofa means crumbs, grease and spills in the living room.

String mops with fixed heads belong in the dustbin of history. Microfibre mops, with detachable cleaning pads, are better in every way. There’s no need for a nasty bucket of grimy water. Instead, spray the floor lightly before wiping. The mophead can be stripped off and chucked in the machine after each use.

Mops that use wipes, such as Mrs Hinch’s Flash Speed Mop, make the job easier but come at an environmental cost. (The wipes are recyclable, through the Terracycle scheme, but there are few drop-off points in Scotland.) But there’s no doubt they are quick and light to use. She even uses hers to do the tiles in her bathroom.

For bigger jobs she rates the Vileda Spin Mop, which uses a footoperated spinning bucket to zap extra moisture from the mop head.

And while an old-school hard bristled broom is still the best thing to use outdoors, on concrete or stone steps, a silicone brush does a much better job inside the house. Some even come with a built-in squeegee, which extends the number of jobs they can do. They not only collect more dust and hair than older models, they are much easier to clean.