Good clean fun – being my own cleaning lady

After nearly half a century of employing a cleaning lady, Valerie Grove had an epiphany: why not clean the house herself ?

We’d had the builders in for months, converting the top two floors into a flat for a daughter and family. Plaster dust flowed down through the house. How would our terrifying Polish cleaner, Berta, react? Well, the dust defeated even Berta. As she left, we agreed to speak again when the men had gone – but somehow never did.

So Monday mornings came, but no 8am ring on the doorbell! No Berta stomping about, banging Hoover against skirting boards, whizzing around like a tornado and sighing in exasperation if one tiptoed across her washed kitchen floor to get coffee. The liberation was miraculous.

We had referred to her as ‘the unsettling presence’ ever since some neighbours had hired her services but quickly dismissed her, explaining that they found her ‘an unsettling presence’. Secretly we agreed.

Now I had a lightbulb moment. Instead of seeking out a new cleaning lady, I decided this First World problem need concern us no longer. After 45 years of adapting to the expectations of the ladies who did for us, we could do for ourselves. Instead of complaining about Berta’s lacunae – eg the Miss Havisham cobwebs she never seemed to notice – we could banish these in a trice with our fine feather dusters.

Of course I now realise it consumes far more than four hours to go over this house (no wonder Berta crashed about so crossly; no wonder previous generations had dailies) but DIY cleaning is better than counting £50 cash into her hand every week.

The totally unexpected thing is how much fonder of my house I am, having sole control of every nook and cranny. And there is nothing that Mrs Hinch – whose new book this year, Hinch Yourself Happy, is the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever – can teach me about cleaning products.

I know I’m a late proselytiser for the domestic arts. At school, my gang scorned to learn skills like scrubbing along the grain of the wood with caustic soda. At home, my industrious mother never demanded help. The sainted Eileen, nanny to our four children, who ruled our roost for 25 years, was not only a Mary Poppins, but also a seamstress and a mistress of the laundry (scourge of stains), under whose regime the contents of the dishwasher gleamed even before they were washed.

I think Virginia Woolf said one of the pleasures of marriage was the freedom to exchange trivial remarks – not that she and Leonard ever discussed, as we now do, the merits of the Co-op’s glass-cleaning spray with vinegar vs Mr Muscle’s Advanced Power.

Unabashedly we sing the praises of Vanish carpet stain-remover (Trevor) and Manger’s sugar soap (me). We validate our addiction to Cif Power & Shine (100% streak-free) and Maas metal polish (imported online from America) to erase cloudy glassware; Wood Silk beeswax furniture polish (‘accept no imitations’); and the trusty Bar Keepers Friend – like Vim, often the final solution.

Belatedly, I feel a new adherence to mantras I long ago absorbed, but never so devoutly acted on. For instance, who said, ‘The chores of life are the pleasures of life’? So banal, yet so true!

It’s a chore to leave the draining board shining and vacant every night, but such a pleasure to meet in the morning. Mary Kenny, when an au pair in France, was once admonished by her employer, ‘ Il faut tout déplacer, mademoiselle!’ In other words, don’t try to get away with sweeping round things.

I’ve noticed all cleaners give basins, whether porcelain or stainless steel, a final swoosh with an old tea towel. I recall how Raine, Countess Spencer, leaving a suite in the Connaught Hotel, turned back and went round vigorously pummelling every cushion, as Barbara Cartland had taught her: ‘My mother’ – biff, biff – ‘always said you must’ – biff – ‘leave a room exactly as you’ – biff, biff – ‘found it.’

Another cliché – again true. The Rev Sydney Smith’s advice ‘Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant’ is quite as important as his rule ‘Keep good blazing fires.’

As for ironing, I’m a passionate devotee. Especially shirts and easy-peasy napkins and pillowcases, on Monday nights in front of University Challenge. What better way of demonstrating domestic-goddess status while exercising the brain?

I confess that Mr Grove has always outstripped me in the role of domestic deity. I have rarely had to prepare a meal, since he is a madly keen, inventive and brilliant cook who also shops (accompanied usually by a grandchild these days) and leaves the kitchen, even the stove, immaculate. And he paints stuff, fixes things and cleans drains. Yes, a paragon: his price far above rubies.

But as Mary Ann Radzinowicz, my American tutor at Cambridge, told us, ‘You may achieve great things; you may become a pillar of your college – but you will never impress your husband unless you keep a good home.’ She was right. Armed with bucket and mop, I now enter my husband’s study and say, like Mrs Mopp in ITMA, ‘Can I do you now, sir?’