Prologue

According to my big sister Cleo, there are two types of cleaners. One is that person who can't bear to see a smeary work surface or a corner with a cobweb in it without reaching for their feather duster. The kind of habitually neat person who keeps a special cupboard in their house specifically for cleaning products, racks of different mops and squeegees, shelves of designated cleaners, racked up like weapons in the war on grime. That's Cleo. She actively enjoys rolling up her sleeves and obliterating mess, whether in her house, your house, or someone else's house. I've even seen her get out her travel wipes in John Lewis.

For Cleo, I suspect, it's all about control. Restoring the world to its perfect, unspoiled, untouched-by-careless-human-hand state is commendably hygienic but it also puts her firmly back in charge. She knows the contents of every drawer, the exact freshness of every pillowcase, the absence of anything untoward under the bed. When Cleo's house is spotless, she's calm. When it's not, well … You want to stay out of range of the bleach spray until it is.

I'm more the second kind of cleaner, someone who cleans to take their mind off something else. I am not a tidy person, literally or metaphorically. My life has always felt like an accidental patchwork of moments, rather than a smoothly unrolling carpet of interlocking patterns, and my brain is even more random: it jumps from one idea to the next, worrying, forgetting, second-guessing, panicking, third-guessing. However, give me a list and a repetitive task and something magical happens. The thoughts stay in line, the doubts fade into the background and I am On Top of Things, if only for a minute or two. But you can make a lot happen in a couple of minutes.

I wouldn't go as far as to say cleaning is better than therapy, and it's definitely not a way of life. However – and I never ever thought I'd be this person, because I am to cleaning what cats are to scuba-diving – this much is fact: mops and scourers slowly took me from chaos to, if not order, then smoothed-out chaos that smells of fresh linen for a couple of hours. It definitely wasn't easy. It definitely wasn't fun. But it's only now my house (and my head) is in order that I can see what a state it was, and how much easier it is to live in both of them now. I also have not one, not two, but four thriving rubber plants.

The story of how I tidied up my world – and learned to understand my big sister – isn't just about cleaning. It's about learning that once you've found a place for everything, including yourself, you don't need to worry about making a mess ever again. Because you can always put things back.