Can Housework Cure Stress? A Recent Survey Claimed Chores Such as Washing-Up Are the Ideal Way to Stay Calm. but Is It Really True?

WASHING-up is is good for the soul and your health - well at least that is what the makers of Fairy Liquid are getting in a lather about. A survey conducted by Proctor & Gamble found that doing the dishes leaves 94 pc of us in an 'upbeat and positive mood'. To test if the suds have got soul we wired-up four writers to monitor stress levels during household chores- including the dreaded washing-up.

DIANA APPLEYARD, 37, is a writer whose first novel, Homing Instinct, about being a working mother in the Nineties, is out in June.

She has two children, Beth, ten, and Charlotte, five, and is married to TV reporter Ross Appleyard. The family lives in Oxfordshire.

HOUSEWORK is not big on my wish list of things to do. Anything beats it - even filling my car with petrol and mucking out my daughters' ponies.

It is a task which needs to be done, that is all, and if anyone had asked me if I thought jobs such as washing-up would make me feel relaxed, I would have replied they were crackers.

The problem with housework is that it is never-ending, especially when the children are at home. A gleaming kitchen one minute is a disaster zone the next with spilt drinks, crisps all over the table and a trail of muddy footprints. All I feel is that I am pushing back the barriers of chaos which threaten to overwhelm our household.

It was therefore with scepticism that I attached myself to the heart monitor. I always imagine I feel extremely stressed when cleaning.

This is because while I am in the act of doing one task, I am thinking about the next, and I'm usually followed about by a …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Can Housework Cure Stress? A Recent Survey Claimed Chores Such as Washing-Up Are the Ideal Way to Stay Calm. but Is It Really True?. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: Daily Mail (London). Publication date: March 1, 1999. Page number: 40. © 2007 Daily Mail. COPYRIGHT 1999 Gale Group.

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