Brightr Cleaning: 44% of UK Adults say that cleaning is a contentious issue in their relationships

(CAMBRIDGE, 26th March 2019) – New research by Brightr has identified that sexism is still alive and kicking when it comes to domestic cleaning in the UK.

Brightr’s national survey - ‘How Dirty is Your Partner’ set out to understand who does most of the cleaning in UK households.
Is cleaning a shared responsibility or does one partner care about it more than the other?

• 44% of respondents said that cleaning is a contentious issue in their relationship.
  
  
• 69% of respondents said that a clean house is very important to them
  
  
• 77% of respondents had a male partner and 22.45% of them don’t even notice the mess!
  
  
• 40% of partners who notice a mess will leave it and see what happens!
  
  
• 6% of people only put a wash on when they have had to wear the same shirt twice!
  
  
• 56.5% of respondents say the kitchen should be the cleanest room in the house.

Survey participants had the opportunity to enter free form comments against 2 questions, a sample of responses is shown below. Some of the comments are both enlightening, entertaining and concerning at the same time:

1 - Is there anything else you would like to tell us about the issue of

cleaning within your household or related to your partner?

• He is a lazy pig who expects me to do everything cos that’s what Mummy did. If he were to lift a finger to help, I’d be checking his temperature to make sure he was feeling alright. I teach our son how to do chores as I refuse to raise a lazy, chauvinistic piglet!
  
  
• As with most men he leaves it all to me. He pretends he ‘can’t’ clean. Boo bloody hoo! I’ve even taught him step by step how to clean the loo, but he seems to have permanent amnesia afterwards!
  
  
• I’d be better off sharing the house with a real-life pig!
  
  
• It annoys me that the majority of cleaning still seems to be done by females. Males generally just don’t seem to see it. Ggggrrr….
  
  
• We try to share, but I sometimes do more as I’m in the house longer. We definitely have blue and pink jobs which sounds a bit sexist, but it works!

2 – In your opinion which room in your house should be the cleanest and why?

• I like the bathroom clean. Who wants to bath in someone else’s’ DNA?
  
  
• Not too worried which room is the cleanest, the Missus does it all, so it’s never dirty!
  
  
• No clue, I am not bothered. People should take us as they find us!
  
  
• All of them because the wife likes it nice.
  
  
• Kitchen – don’t want to give anyone food poisoning