Daily Mail - 29.08.2019

Page 56 Daily Mail, Thursday, August 29, 2019

by Antonia

Hoyle

56 femailMAGAZINE

F

ROM washing to sweeping

and scrubbing the bathtub,

keeping a home clean can be

every bit as time consuming

as a full time job.

Throw in the fact many of us do also have a

living to earn, along with children to look after

and a partner we’d like to see once in a while,

and the task can seem positively Herculean.

Even in 2019, women are still more likely to

do housework than men in 93 per cent of

households, a University College London

study revealed last month.

Now, however, a new book rubbishes the

notion that hours of hard graft are required to

make a house shine. The Organised Mum

Method (TOMM) claims all the cleaning can

be done in just 30 minutes a day.

Author and mother of three Gemma Bray

insists devoting just half an hour to house-

work each day from Monday to Friday will not

only leave your home spick and span, but

eliminate the need to lift a finger over the

weekend and banish spring cleaning for good.

Bray, a no-nonsense Northerner with natty

catchphrases (‘get in, get it done and then get

outta there!’) coined The Organised Mum

Method while buckling under the weight of

housework on maternity leave from running

her own fish and chip shop.

Two years ago she started sharing her con-

cept online. Now, with 161,000 Instagram fol-

lowers (or TOMMers, as they are known in

her vast online community), she is one of a

new breed of ‘cleanfluencers’ — social media

stars, including Sophie Hinchcliffe, aka Mrs

Hinch, and Lynsey ‘Queen of Clean’ Crombie,

who have amassed an army of fans with their

housekeeping advice.

The nation’s obsession with cleaning has

also brought about a revival of traditional

products such as bicarbonate of soda, which

have started appearing in the cleaning prod-

uct aisles of shops such as Wilko.

The idea of being able to run an orderly

home in less time than it takes to watch The

Great British Bake Off, is appealing — espe-

cially to someone with as haphazard an

approach to housekeeping as me.

But does TOMM work? I donned my Mari-

golds to find out...

THE BOOK’S PREMISE

FROM Monday to Thursday, focus on clean-

ing one area of your house for 30 minutes a

day. Monday is for tackling the living room,

Tuesday the bedrooms, Wednesday your hall-

ways and stairs and Thursday the kitchen.

This is followed by the ‘Friday Focus’ — a

half hour deep cleaning stint dedicated to a

specific part of the house, which rotates on an

eight week cycle. Bray’s fans (known as Team

TOMM) all follow the same schedule on social

media and the book features an eight-week

‘Friday Focus’ checklist to copy.

Bathroom cleaning, meanwhile, is part of

your ‘daily running tasks’ — an additional 15

minutes a day in which high traffic

areas of the home are kept clean with

a ‘little and often approach’.

This is not (thankfully) a book push-

ing perfection — Bray discourages

obsessive cleaning, granting ‘permis-

sion to stop after the 30 minutes are

up’. There is one caveat, however: a

cast iron focus is needed during the

half hour. Scrolling through social

media or stopping for a cuppa is

discouraged.

The additional daily time, which can

be spread throughout the day when-

ever you can grab a minute (to a max-

imum of 15 minutes) is to keep things

‘ticking over’.

(Discovering Bray’s regime adds

another quarter of an hour to the core

30 minutes of cleaning feels slightly

disingenuous but her idea is that this

blitz becomes so second nature you

barely notice doing it.)

Jobs in this section include making

beds, vacuuming or sweeping, clean-

ing the bathroom and kitchen and

washing, drying and putting away one

load of washing.

PREPARATION NEEDED

BECAUSE, as TOMM explains,

you can’t clean clutter,

‘entry level’ TOMMers

such as myself begin

with ‘The Messy

House Bootcamp’

— a week-long (or

more if needed)

blitz in which all

household pos-

sessions are

divided into

three piles and

kept, binned

or donated.

Bray advocates a

‘one touch policy’ —

once you’ve picked up

an item decide what to do

with it before putting it down

again — and recommends taking

before and after pictures of the clut-

ter then the clutter-free space to

boost motivation.

As a hoarder I dread this part, which

takes around an hour a room. But

after two days, during which my ini-

tially reluctant daughter Rosie, eight,

and son Felix, six, help discard a

mountain of tat in their rooms, I grow

more merciless. A candlestick I was

given for my 21st birthday is

binned, along with my noughties eye-

shadow collection.

‘I feel so much freer, Mummy,’ admits

Rosie, who can see her carpet for the

first time in months. So do I. By the

end of the week — six bin bags lighter

— I’m raring to go.

ELBOW GREASE TO

START YOU OFF

BRAy dedicates Monday to the living

room on account of the ‘bashing’ it

gets over the weekend.

Chores, although not prescriptive

(TOMM acknowledges that no two

houses are the same) might include

tidying up, washing throws, cleaning

windows, dusting and vacuuming.

I settle the children in front of the

television (not sure what Bray would

make of this, but holidays are not the

easisest time to start a new cleaning

regime. The minute you clear some-

thing up, they mess it up), set my stop

clock (timing a clean is ‘non negotia-

ble’ to ensure TOMMers don’t over-

run) and get to work with my duster,

starting in one corner of the room and

moving clockwise for efficiency, as

per instructions.

I try not to get ‘caught in the weeds,’

as Bray puts it, and waste time on

smaller jobs. Instead, I charge

around like a madwoman sort-

ing books, filing bills and

watering plants, before

running a bucket of hot

soapy water, TOMM’s

preferred cleaning liq-

uid, to wash the win-

dows. I’m so focused

I finish tasks I’d nor-

mally fill weeks with,

in just 23 minutes.

STRUGGLING

WITH SHEETS

TUESDAy is bedroom

day, so allocated by Gemma

Bray because it’s the most

challenging apparently and,

although it is best done at the start of

the week before energy levels flag, it’s

too much, she believes, for a Monday.

In addition to dusting, vacuuming

and tidying bedrooms, her regime

decrees all sheets need to be changed.

I recoil in horror. I’d never normally

change more than one bed at a time

every week and because we had guests

staying over the weekend I have four

sets of bedsheets to change.

It takes me 27 minutes and 40 sec-

onds to strip and remake all four beds

as fast as I can, by which time I am

sweating profusely.

Perhaps I am slow, but I am scepti-

cal I could whittle my time down.

STAIRS CAN OFFER A

MID-WEEK BREATHER!

BLESSED relief! Wednesday is for

tidying and cleaning the entrance hall

and stairs — the easiest areas, accord-

ing to Bray and therefore allocated to

the ‘worst and most boring day of the

week’. Of course, they’re better for

bungalow dwellers than people in

three storey homes like me...

TOMM recommends investing in a

decent doormat that stops dirt get-

ting in, and a cabinet in the hall that

Scrub a

dub dub

THE average Brit spends

two years cleaning

their homes during

their lifetime, new

research has

revealed

Gloves on... for some ‘daily

running tasks’ in the bathroom

Thursday... so it must be time

to tackle grime in the kitchen