Keep it Clean

Posted by Verity on November 24, 2025 in Consumer issues, Health, Humour, Living today | 4 comments

As first world problems go, it’s right up there in the triviality stakes (though not as high as fretting about finding a Labubu to match one’s handbag.)

What is occupying so much of my mental bandwidth at the moment is my bathroom floor. I had some vinyl flooring which was becoming increasingly hard to clean replaced by some lovely tiles  – and white grout! What was I thinking?! How could I have abandoned my lifelong principle of ‘get it in black so it doesn’t show the dirt’ so readily? I suspect aesthetic considerations pushed out all thoughts of practicality. And now practicality has rudely trashed aesthetics.

For it will not surprise you to learn that much of the white grout is now grey and stubbornly resistant to any cleaning product I or Mr Verity throw at it – or, more accurately, apply painstakingly along its length.

What to do? I could transcend this problem magnificently, rising to a spiritual plane where such gross material concerns hold no sway. Except it would be unreasonable to expect everyone else to do so. I am haunted by an interview I came across with a mother and daughter. Though close to her mother, the daughter recalled that while she was growing up her house was so unspeakably filthy she never felt she could invite her friends round. Her mother, obviously a magnificently transcendent type, was genuinely surprised. She really hadn’t noticed. (Where was the father in all this, you may ask? Clearly not on his hands and knees with a scrubbing brush.)

But I’m more of a (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde) lying-in-the-gutter-but-facing-down-so-I-can’t-see-the-stars-only-the-manky-grout-AND-everything-else-that-needs-a-good-clean type. And that’s the trouble with cleaning. The more you do, the more you see that needs doing, and once you’ve seen it you can’t unsee it.  It took me decades to realise that skirting boards were a thing and they needed cleaning, but once I did, I started noticing the dust on the dado rails, the bits that stick out at the edge of stairs, the bevelled bits in door panels… Is there no end to it?

I seek guidance from the AI oracle, which tells me I should be cleaning my oven every month (just bonkers, IMHO) and – get this – wiping the light switches in the bathroom every week. If you have wipeable light switches in your bathroom, you are surely more in need of an electrician than a cleaning routine.

The jury is still out on whether too much cleaning has led to an increase in allergies and autoimmune diseases because of reduced exposure to bacteria, but I have to say that the healthiest-looking infant I ever saw was one allowed to crawl around the hoppy puddles in his parents’ microbrewery.

In the meantime, all I want for Christmas is a skilled elf from Airtasker to bring me the grey grout of my dreams…