The sexism of the conversation about cleaners and Covid

I don’t have a cleaner. Admittedly, whether I do or not isn’t really relevant to the argument I’m about to make. But quite often when you talk about cleaners, you’ll get a reaction like this: ‘That lazy, dirty Karen, she should clean up after herself instead of farting out columns while someone picks up around her.’ Because people are weird about cleaners. And by weird, I mean very sexist and enormously dishonest.

So I don’t have a cleaner. But God, I have never wanted one more than I do during lockdown. I am not a clean person. Maybe a six out of ten on the clean scale, by which I mean I’ve been inside a Lakeland more than once but can still make a bottle of floor soap last several years. (If you don’t know what Lakeland or floor soap are, then I’m afraid you are a sub-five on the clean scale.