5 Top Tips To A Clutter Free Home This 2011

With the New Year comes a new you, but what about your home? Start 2011 as you mean to go on and ensure that you’re equipped with the right tools to make your job around the home easier! After all, no one wants to spend hours mopping, dusting and scrubbing when you could be spending time on the new you.

So why not follow our top tips to domestic bliss this 2011.

TOP TIP 1

Firstly, deal with clutter. This will make cleaning quicker and more straightforward.

TOP TIP 2

Be effective and efficient by mopping in the correct way. The best way to mop tiled floors (with a strip mop) is by using a figure of 8 motion. Why not try our new 3Action SuperMocio; the lemon shaped head can get right into those difficult corners, and the mop head can even be popped in the washing machine!

TOP TIP 3

Cut dusting time in half by using a microfibre duster such as our Soft Dust Cloth. These microfibres attract and attach dust to the cloth rather than spreading it around.

TOP TIP 4

As it’s a new year, why not create a fresh perspective by rearranging the furniture? Moving the furniture around can give you the motivation you need to clean the room out and get it looking like new.

TOP TIP 5

Spray surfaces first, allow the cleaning product to do its job for a couple of minutes and then wipe. Simple! Our great value All Purpose Cloths are ideal as they can be machine washed and used again, and again. And, with an RSP of only 99p they’re a bargain.

Mop the Halls with Smells so Jolly

We all like our homes to smell of fresh and fragrant, thanks to Zoflora, your home can! It can smell of lavender, hyacinth, citrus or even sweetpea!

Zoflora has been making our homes smell nice since 1922 with a range of antibacterial fragrances to suit any home. They’ve now teamed up with Vileda to give you the chance to win a selection of Zoflora antibacterial sprays, including their limited edition Winter Spice fragrance, along with the latest 3Action SuperMocio and Power Press bucket and wringer.

Click here to answer the question and enter the competition.

Mrs Mop Does a Marathon Clean Every Year

British women do so much cleaning that over the course of a year they cover the same distance as a full-length marathon with their mop.

According to a nationwide study of domestic duties by cleaning expert Vileda, the average British woman mops nearly 26 miles of floor each year. This equates to a staggering 1,150 miles with a mop in a lifetime – the equivalent to jogging from Brighton to Glasgow – and back again.

Their male counterparts aren’t going quite the same distance, coming in at just over 20 miles a year.

The survey, which polled 3,000 people from all across the UK*, also reveals that the average time women spend mopping is 11 minutes and 45 seconds per session compared to a shorter time of just over 10 minutes for men.

The Northern Irish mop the furthest – mopping more than 2,000 miles each year. And it’s the South East who spend’s the least time mopping, with 27% admitting to spending only up to 5 minutes mopping each time.

It was revealed that Londoners like to spend lots of time scrubbing the floor, with 63% of those polled admitting to getting down on their hands and knees regularly to tackle those tough stains.

Lindsey Taylor, spokesperson for Vileda, said: “British women really are going the distance when it comes to mopping.

“Interestingly, the most regular moppers are people with grey hair – mopping at least twice a week.

“Cleaning doesn’t need to be a massive chore – little and often is the best way - there really is no excuse for those who don’t mop regularly.”

Big Brother Cleans Up

As you’re probably aware, this year is the very last Big Brother on Channel 4. After 11 years of keeping us entertained throughout the summer, we’ll be waving goodbye to Davina and all the contestants that we love to hate.

If you don’t know any of the housemates in this series, fear not, you’ll probably spot a friendly face or two… This year Vileda has donated a lots of cleaning equipment for the house, and if you’ve been watching closely you’ll have already spotted the NEW 3Action SuperMocio making several appearances – including being ironically used to make a mess by housemate mole Mario.

Corin has also been spotted today cleaning the kitchen and bathroom – we think it’ll be spotless in no time if she keeps using the SuperMocio!

Stay tuned for more Big Brother cleaning highlights!

New Term Clean

At this time of year everyone's thoughts turn to the kids going back to school. I don't know about you, but no matter how old I get I always think of this time as the start of a new year. It is a new beginning and just like the kids have shiny new stationery and shoes, I think we should have shiny clean homes as well. With children in and out of the house all summer, it is easy to get a bit behind on the housework. This is why I would recommend a good clean at the start of the new academic year.

It won't be such a big job to get ready for guests at Christmas and also will you keep you busy if you are missing the little ones after the summer.


I suggest you plan ahead and think how gorgeous your house will look when you have finished. This gives you the motivation for a big clean!

Ensure you equip yourself properly - a tradesperson is only as good as her tools!

Have all the supplies ready - so make sure you have enough multi-surface cleaner, heavy duty degreaser and bleach at least.

Get rid of any clutter - you can't clean in a messy space. Either find a home for everything or dump it. This is a great tip for refreshing the home at the start of a new year.

Make it fun - turn the stereo up and grab that SuperMocio to use as a microphone.

Let me know how you get on - anyone who posts a picture of themselves singing/ dancing while they are cleaning will win some great Vileda goodies to help them keep going with the new term clean.

Brits make better husbands?

I spotted this article in the Independent this week

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/hit-and-run/hit--run-home-and-away-at-home-in-la-1767242.html

According to a study from the Oxford University, Brits make better husbands than Italians, French and Americans because they are more likely to chip in with housework.
As you can see from our previous post, David Beckham is a cleaning fan.
To try and encourage your husband to clean, make sure you don’t buy pink marigolds and any technical cleaning equipment (such as our SuperMocio) will surely appeal to gadget mad men!

Do you want to encourage your partners to do more cleaning or is he a domestic god already?

Emmah Littlewood
Clever Clean Team

Big Brother housemates scrub up with Vileda!

On Saturday (20 June) the Big Brother housemates called in the cleaning experts, Vileda, to scrub up their living quarters with a host of Vileda products.

It appears that Sree was more interested in dancing with his SuperMocio than mopping with it and Karly had a jolly old time wiping the windows with her Vileda Naturals All Purpose cloth whilst dancing to the Pussycat Dolls!

Noreen got to grips with the communal bathroom with her Vileda Bath Magic (with telescopic handle to help get into those difficult to reach areas without bending or stretching).

One things for sure, the Big Brother housemates showed that cleaning can be fun when dancing along to music and having a laugh with your friends - you can even burn 250 calories per hour during a vigorous cleaning session - now that is most definitely clever cleaning!

HOUSEWORK? IT’S A WOMAN’S JOB SAY UK MEN

It's Father's Day this weekend and four out of ten British men still think that housework is a woman’s job!

A shocking 38% of men think domestic duties should naturally fall to women to complete, according to a new Vileda poll.

The poll proves that sexist stereotypes are still very much in play in the 21st century despite an apparent boom in so-called ‘new’ men – with an astonishing 1 in 5 men (18%) admitting that they still do absolutely no cleaning around the home.

And, surprisingly, it’s dads and married men who are worst. A whopping 78% of those men who admitted doing nothing around the home were married and/or fathers.

Vileda has also unearthed that a surprising 71% of Brit blokes claim to do very little cleaning in the home. Delving further into the survey of 1,853 men, one in three men say they have never tackled the bathroom with a mop, bucket or cloth and 7% say they don’t even know where the cleaning products are kept in the house!

Lindsey Taylor from the Vileda Clever Clean Team says: “We were surprised to learn that the age old opinions about who is responsible for the running of the home still hold weight with many UK men.

“We are supposed to be in an age of the ‘new-man’ – but the men’s answers to our survey tells a very different story.”

There is, however, some light at the end of the tunnel for under-fire UK males – as UK women’s perception of the domestic dust-up is quite different from their own.

The study reveals that two thirds of women believe that the extra pressures exerted by the credit crunch is actually turning their men into a nation of domestic gods.

The poll found that three quarters of women claim their men now clean the house more than they did six months ago, while a further 55% even go as far as saying their male other-halves single-handedly purchase the week’s groceries.

Even the kids are benefiting from dad's recent revival as 36% more now share the school run with mum, according to the females polled.

And it seems the girls could be right because Vileda's latest figures from its customer service department reveals that the top selling SuperMocio mop is currently being enquired about twice as much by males than females.

One male celebrity goes further than simply bucking the trend when it comes to housework though. David Beckham admits to owning and wearing a pinny when he does housework around the home.

Mind you, it’s a tad more than Desperate Housewives Eva Longoria wears when she spruces up the living room with her feather duster – she admits to regularly doing the housework naked!

MP Expenses or is it MOP Expenses!?

THERE may be more than the odd red face after the publication of expenses claims by our Members of Parliament this week.

But in seeking to clean up its act by revealing what MPs are claiming for at the tax payers’ expense Parliament has also heralded a new domestic hero – the Vileda SuperMocio.

The number one selling household mop was one of the more unusual items claimed for on the expenses of one MP back in 2005 and revealed to the world last weekend.

At least we know if they are going to clean up their act that Members of Parliament are using the right tools to get the best job done.

The SuperMocio’s revolutionary Collectex™ and Pick Up Pocket technology means that small particles that can be left behind, get trapped in pockets - resulting in 40% more particle pick up.

Hmmm, Members of Parliament? Maybe we should change it from MP to MOP in light of the new expenses revelations.