It’s almost time to deck the halls – and scrub them too. Thanksgiving and Christmas may provide extra time to spend with friends and family, but they also trigger more time spent house cleaning. Holiday cleaning can nearly triple the weekly time spent by women, according to a national survey conducted by StrategyOne and commissioned by Georgia-Pacific. Women already spend 116 minutes cleaning their homes each week. Holiday gatherings can add almost four hours to that, including time spent before and after at-home parties. According to the survey:
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Thanksgiving and Christmas are the messiest holidays of all.
Getting clean for the holidays means spending 115 minutes tidying up
before get-togethers and another 85 minutes sopping up after at-home
parties end.
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Christmas is considered the messiest holiday by majority of
women (57.3%), followed by Thanksgiving (32.5%), New Year’s (3.4%) and
Halloween (2.5%).
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When it comes to help, two-thirds of women said they would like
assistance with cleaning, more so than other household tasks including
cooking (11.6%), laundry (6.4%), ironing (4.8%), pet care (3.9%) and
babysitting (3.3%). Yet, only one-third of women are actually receiving
help with household chores. Among those that receive help, half
typically receive it from their spouse or significant other and 17%
receive it from their child/children.
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Cleaning up after pets (27.1%) was noted as being just as hard
as cleaning up after their spouse or significant other (25.6%), and more
difficult than cleaning up after their child (20.1%).
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Scrubbing the tub/shower (30%), cleaning the toilet (14.7%),
mopping the floor (13.5%), dusting (11.4%) and cleaning windows (11%)
are the chores women enjoy least.
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Taking out the trash is the one task women are most likely to
rely on a housemate to handle (36.8%), followed by vacuuming (10.9%) and
cooking (8.5%).
