'How filthy are you?'

The OP intrigued me - there are things listed there that I have NEVER washed, nor ever thought to!

We’re all of the ‘bit of dirt never hurt anyone’ persuasion but sometimes unpleasant things do happen. Ds/dil and both small dgs ended up with a cryptosporidium infection after little ones had been playing in a farm puddle. Not a very good two weeks followed - they still visit the farm but no more playing in the puddles!

My husband has just asked me to remind him not to stand up with his glasses on - he has just seen the top of the lampshade!
Someone said about the chemicals when a duvet is dry cleaned. This is absolutely right. I slept under a recently dry cleaned duvet at my daughter's once and I coughed all night. If I feel our king size duvets need washing, I take them to the launderette as they won't fit into our machine.
Like POGS, I am fussy about toilets, sinks etc. but a bit of dust doesn't bother me.
I also have my corner of shame in the living room. I knit for various charities so have bags of wool, pins etc. all round the area where I sit.

I have over the years said my domestic heroine was Miss Haversham from Great Expectations.

You know the scene where her wedding feast has just festered well 4 weeks ago we started stripping the lounge/ dining area and I realised I had become Miss Haversham.

The odd thing is the inside of my cupboards are cleaner than the outside and I ensure toilets are spotless.

Teetime I think there is a difference betwewn a little untidyness and downright dirt

I love memory foam pillows and they wash well although they do take an age to dry naturally-I do not have a tumble drier. I wash them on a fine summer's day and around 3 days later they are ready to use again, perfect.

My mother was a "clean freak" and we lived in the kitchen- keeping the other two rooms downstairs for "best". Not my style.

I could counter this with our family experience. When our children were growing up we saw a lot of my BIL and his family. BIL was a Headteacher who knew everything. One of his theories that we were too clean and our immune systems would suffer. Their house was chaos and quite dirty paerticulalry the kitchen and bathrooms our the opposite. Guess whose children had constant colds and bouts of D & V - yep theirs!

A friend who is not known for her housekeeping skills once asked me what her kids would remember, that Mum would get down on the floor and play with them or that the house was always spotless.

Could these specific articles be mainly written by the manufacturers of the million and one "aids to cleaning" we find stocked along our supermarket shelves?
Do we * really * need a different can/bottle/spray for each and every area of our homes?
Our parents certainly did not have this vast array offered them, and further more the majority probably never bought any one of those available at that time, as they simply could not afford them.
Yet they survived, as did we the generation of youngsters at this time ...............so personally I regard all this do gooders advice with a massive teaspoon of salt and I turn a blind eye and deaf ear.
I guess we shall all survive even so!!!

I tend to replace pillows rather than try to wash them, they are never the same and often lumpy after washing. Duvets get a wash when I can be bothered.
Curtains, vac'd, really?
General vac/dust when it's needed etc, occasional blitz of a room is what my house gets.

My friends Mum is a stickler for cleaning, her house is always spotless. When her granddaughters were young she would have them washing their hands every time they did something, coming in from the garden (not allowed to play with anything dirty though) or doing anything indoors. Those girls had every illness going, spent all winter coughing etc. Always off to the doctor with one of them. In the end the doctor said to the Gran (she'd taken one of the girls into the surgery, where she also worked) that part of the problem was they were kept too clean and had no natural immunity. He said he knew how houseproud she was, basically telling her in a round about way she wasn't helping the problem. She never changed her habits. A bit of dirt never hurts.

Well said ladies. Common sense by experts. I was going to go mad in the house today but that’s it - I am going to build up my immunity today and enjoy myself.

I don't make hard work of cleaning and learned just recently that I am on the right lines. I don't watch ' Trust Me I'm a Doctor ' but just happened to catch part of a recent programme where Philip Hammond was saying that many of us are simply trying to be 'too clean'. This drive for cleanliness, is apparently, lowering our immunity. Now I feel really righteous for doing less!

My DD was renown for poo picking (pony) her stable with one hand and her sandwich in the other!!!! Hardly ever ill, her DS aged 3 has been around / in stables since he was born, shakes off most bugs/viruses within 24/36 hours. DGD who's Mum (DIL) is forever wiping her hands, toys etc with anti bacterial wipes -always poorly. We need exposure to germs / dirt to build up our immunity. Only use eco friendly cleaning products at home, as I believe the chemicals in a lot of modern day products are more harmful than the germs they are meant to clean away. If it looks dirty / dusty clean it, if not leave well alone.

Pillow protectors that are washed every other month at 60 degrees mean that I don't really feel the need to wash my down or feather and down pillows.
If I thought they were dirty I might do that once a year with the down duvets . All done at 60 degrees and dried in the sun and finished in the tumble drier.
Did you know that children who grow up on a farm with greater contact with animals and mud and muck have a greater immunity than other children.

I wash feather pillows and tumble dry them every three months or so,they dry well and fluff up like new.It extends the life of them considerably .I am very fussy about bedding and towels so its every other day for towels and twice a week for bedding.I'm not so hot on cleaning windows ,maybe because I have 4 GC and a cat that leave marks on them instantly when they are cleaned ..so I dont see the sense in fretting about them .

I would take a guess that the people writing the article don’t know one end of a vacuum cleaner from the other!

Not seen the article myself but it was probably written by one of these maid services or similar. Lol
After having very expensive duvets in the past I now buy cheap ones and just replace them every so often . I cut up old ones and make covers for them and take them to a dog rescue centre. Same with pillows. I got fed up of waking with a scratched face with feather pillows and found them bad for my neck anyway.
I'm not really into cleaning like some are but I do like a tidy home.
I just wish I could muster up the enthusiasm to clean the cooker more , well the ovens , the top is kept clean.

In my humble opinion most of it is a load of old tosh as my Nan used to say. I clean when things are dirty, but quite frankly I’m not wasting my life on hoovering curtains or some such.

None of us are allergic to anything and our littles are robust and I’m sure some of that is that we don’t try and kill 99% of all know germs ?

Feathers go in the compost heap, don't they?

The other one seems to be mostly about knife blocks.

It’s a ridiculous article in many ways. Is it an advertisement for cleaning products? If I came across someone cleaning the inside and outside of their handbag with antiseptic wipes I’d suggest they go to see the doctor about their mental health.

There's another thread about this article

It is interesting that in these times when hygiene is such a fetish, the incidence of allergies and asthma is so high.

I wash old pillows and put them in those recycling bins or the charity bags! Though sometimes dogs homes use them.

How do you dispose of old pillows - feather or foam - do you put them in the non recycling bin?

Not seen this particular article but I have seen others in a similar vein. These people don't live in the real world where there are time and financial constraints on all of us.
It's good to have some sort of yardstick but it needs to be realistic.
I wash my duvet once a year unless anything has been spilled on it. I do have a thing about pillows though and buy them when they are reduced so I can replace them regularly. I have never been successful washing pillows.