Which European country has the cleanest homes?
A survey by YouGov has gathered information about European households’ cleaning habits. Who is most eager to get into those dusty nooks and crannies, and who is hanging around while their partner picks up after them?
Italian households are the cleanest in Europe
A representative survey conducted by YouGov Switzerland, which surveyed 5.045 people in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France, has found that Italian households are “the cleanest in Europe”.
Answering the questions, “How often do you clean the floors in your house?”, “How often do you dust in your home?” and “How often do you clean your bathroom?” Italians revealed themselves as the most avid cleaners.
58 percent of Italians said they cleaned the floors several times per week, compared to 47 percent in Austria and France and 39 percent in Germany. 40 percent of Italian households claimed to dust several times per week, compared to just 23 percent in Germany. 63 percent of Italians scrub the toilet bowl several times per week, compared to 35 percent in Germany.
Instead, the majority of people in Germany said that they did these tasks once per week, while a smaller percentage completed them every two weeks or even less regularly.
Men still aren’t doing their share of housework
Across the five European countries, the survey revealed that gendered expectations prevail when it comes to the division of cleaning and tidying tasks in heterosexual couples.
68 percent of men surveyed said they clean their home, compared to 91 percent of women. Just 14 percent of women said their partner cleaned, compared to 49 percent of men. While only around one in 10 households hire a cleaner in Europe, 13 percent of men said that a cleaner cleans their home.
While many heterosexual couples may aim to divide household and caregiving tasks 50-50, various structural and socio-economic factors - on average women are more likely to work part-time because their salaries are lower than their male partners - mean domestic labour continues to fall along gendered lines.
Thumb image credit: Small365 / Shutterstock.com
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