Turning into your mother?

Or is it something deeper, asks Carol Muskoron, Web Editor of GH

It was on a Saturday morning while I was pootling around the house tidying up, that it occurred to me: I was actually enjoying housework. I work full time so I hardly spend any time at home really and I nearly always end up spending Saturday morning cleaning the kitchen. In the past I've always resented it - it was my time off and here I was cleaning of all things! I'd grouch around, seriously considering getting a cleaner in on a Friday. But on this particular day there was no grouching. I cleaned the work surfaces, then the floor - and I could have stopped there but no, I emptied the fridge and cleaned that too. And then the fronts of the cupboards were under attack.

 

I put my Dolly Parton CD on and belted out 9-5 along with Dolly while I cleaned and I was really, really content!

 

For the record, I hadn't started taking Prozac, this was a natural high.

 

Did it happen because I'd recently taken on the job of Web Editor of Good Housekeeping - that may have had something to do with it, but I don't think it was solely responsible. I've worked for women's magazines for years.

 

I brought this up in my next meeting with Good Housekeeping editor Louise Chunn. We both got quite animated about it. Louise wondered if it was a time of life thing. If we are all predestined to discover the pleasures of a mop at around 40. If we were all, in fact, destined to turn into our mothers?!

 

I think there's more to it than that. I think we really are witnessing - drumroll please - the Return of the Good Housekeeper! Sounds like a sinister movie starring Maggie Smith bearing a meat cleaver, doesn't it?! But I do genuinely think that housework and all things ‘home' are now in vogue and sexy. Here's my evidence...

 

We have Nigella oohing and ahhing and licking her gorgeous lips as she cooks and no end of celebrity chefs. We have homes programmes coming out of our ears asking us how clean we are, what décor we like, what our homes are worth. Knitting and crochet are suddenly trendy again with the likes of  Russell Crowe, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Jessica Parker taking to the needles. And all kinds of craft are taking off - women I know are making cards and jewellery as well as cakes and curries.

 

I set up a thread on good housekeeping.co.uk to check out my story and loads of you dashed onto the discussion boards to confess that you too are getting off on housekeeping! You adore biscuit making, tapestry, ironing (big surprise to me, that one), washing (another big surprise), marmalade and chutney making, curtain making, bread making...

 

There was a lot more besides, and boy were you animated about it! Check out the thread here - it's very long and lots of fun, and I want to officially thank everybody who contributed to it. Two revelations came out of it: the new Good Housekeeper is not only keen, she is also green AND she goes online to solve many of her housekeeping problems. It didn't surprise us - we know that millions of women are smart enough to check out our tried and tested section before buying anything!

 

I called our marketing department and commissioned a survey on housekeeping. The results are in any day now but I decided not to wait to see if the statistics bear out my suspicions and went ahead planning our online special The Return of the Good Housekeeper, bringing together all the things that the modern-day homemaker would appreciate in one place. It wasn't a hard task, with the brilliant GH team of food, consumer and home journalists behind me...

 

And so all here in one place we have the top 10 ultimate recipes and products, incredible green tips, the gadgets that are so good they make your purr (no good housekeeper worth her salt wants to waste her time and money on naff ones!). We've also got the GH magazine staff owning up to the chores they love and giving their household tips, we've got celebrity housekeepers, a fun quiz, a woman who reckons she's the ultimate good housekeeper and more. We'll be adding to over the summer months so keep dropping by.  It's going to be fun.  There'll be downloadable knitting patterns, fashion, beauty and more for the modern day housekeeper (that's you, and me!). Enjoy.

 

Bye for now

 

Carol