Diary of One Who Employs a Cleaner

So you think you've got the answer to all your cleaning problems... get a cleaner! It's simple. Or is it? The following diary written by someone who employs a cleaner might make you think again.

• 7.30am Cleaner due in 90 minutes. Aaargh! Mad rush to clean, dust, spritz, buff and polish things so that cleaner doesn't think I'm a slob (she would of course be right). Hide dirty underwear. Bin really dirty underwear. Hide 'dirty' (ie provocative) underwear so cleaner doesn't think I'm kinky.

• 8am Leave house to avoid encountering cleaner - she thinks I have a proper nine to five job.

• 9am Realise I've forgotten to leave money for cleaner.

• 9.30am Return home to encounter cleaner reading my mail. Embarrassed exchange of pleasantries and 20 quid.

• 9.45am Point out that windows need cleaning. Cleaner sniffs. 'Don't do windows 'cos of me back'. Neither does she do 'fridges, ovens, chip pans or cat litter'. (I don't have a cat. Perhaps she is trying to tell me my flat smells a bit?)

• 10am Cleaner makes tea, complains about lack of milk and asks whether I'm going to be late for work.

• 11am - 5pm Mooch around shops trying not to think about what cleaner might be poking about with in my flat. Contemplate shinning up drainpipe and peering through window, then remember it's too dirty to see through.

• 6pm Return home. Admire the way cleaner has moved every single item of furniture. Spend three hours moving it all back, and thus uncovering stains which cleaner couldn't be arsed to clean.

• 9pm Note marked absence of biscuits, tea, pile of nicely ironed clothes and assorted newspapers marked 'please do not chuck out as I haven't read these yet'.

• 10pm Sit down to watch video recording of Eastenders screened earlier on in the evening.

• 10.05pm Discover that cleaner unplugged video and reset it.

• 10.06pm Watch unwanted eight hour video of International Golf, before falling asleep and having violent dreams about disembowelment of cleaner with a Dyson crevice tool.

Repeat once a week as necessary, and say out loud, rhetorically, 'This is 'labour-saving'?'