WHEN did you last vacuum your mattress? Or wash your doormats?

These household tasks form part of a checklist drawn up to help keep our housework under control.

A team from the Good Housekeeping Institute identified jobs that have to be done daily, while others can be left for six months or even a year.

It makes disturbing reading - some of the tasks I have never even considered doing: who vacuums their mattress? I haven’t seen ours in years, it being covered with a mattress protector, which I obviously have not cleaned either.

It’s a massive chore to change bedding - something that should be carried out weekly, but in our house is more like every two or three months. Basically, if it’s looking a bit tired and grubby on my husband’s side of the bed (mine is always fresh as a newly picked daisy) it gets changed. No amount of reminding that every day our body sheds millions of skin cells and that we lose a litre of sweat during a typical night’s sleep will lead to my changing them more often.

Doormats should be washed monthly. I can grasp the idea of shaking them, but who could be bothered to wash a doormat? Ours is held together with mud and would probably fall apart on contact with water. And where are we supposed to wash them? The muck and mess would surely clog up any washing machine.

Every spring we find ourselves bombarded with information as to how, what and when we should clean. We are made to feel so guilty - no wonder so many people become obsessive compulsive cleaners. I only have to glance at a women’s magazine at this time of year, with all its tips on dusting and Hoovering and washing and wiping, to make me feel like a disgusting slob. You never see such things in Esquire or GQ.

Although today’s men muck in with cooking - my husband does 95 per cent of ours - and childcare, they still do far less cleaning than women, research carried out in the USA found. This week I noticed a massive stain on the bedroom carpet. “I spilled coffee the other day,” my husband announced, having made no effort to get rid of it.

Reading the checklist, I heaved a sigh of relief to see that I actually do carry out the bulk of the chores that you are meant to do every day - make the beds, clean the toilet bowl and wash up. Kitchen surfaces - something else you should tackle every day - go by the wayside, but no-one’s died due to a few rogue coffee granules, breadcrumbs and small spillages of milk.

Research by Mintel last year found that the average time households spend cleaning each week was four hours, seven minutes. Subtract four hours and that’s closer to average for me.

The study found that cleaning the oven is the most hated task should be cleaned every three to six months. I feel mildly embarrassed to admit that we have not cleaned the inside of ours for years. I occasionally clean the racks when I'm listening to something on the radio and want something to do, and my husband cleans the hob, but we don't scour the inside. We inherited it from the previous owners of the house and I pretend (usually when my mum visits) that it is one of those self-cleaning models.

You’re supposed to launder your duvet and pillows every six months, but I don’t imagine many people do. It would be a dry cleaning job, and would cost virtually as much as new ones.

The thought of spring cleaning rituals are enough to make me want to crawl under our 50 per cent cotton/50 per cent skin cell duvet and stay there until summer.

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