Your Place: Housecleaning advice from two who know

I really shouldn't say, "Now I've seen everything," because who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Instead, I will, as Phil Rizzuto and Harry Caray (take your pick) would have said, "Holy cow!" It turns out there's a website called www.bObsweep.com that employs Ali Afrouzi as "lead technologist and chief chore expert."

Fair enough.

When I was on the Discovery Channel's Home Matters program from 1998 to 2001, cohost Chris McWatt always introduced me as "The Gadgeteer." But my job was to demonstrate new gadgets I came across at product expositions here and around the country. Afrouzi's is to discover that 40 percent of women contacted in a national survey do more cleaning chores in the home than their partners do. That, and to promote bObsweep, a robotic vacuum cleaner.

The bottom line of this national survey of 2,000 men and women by Learndipity Data Insights was that gender differences still persist when it comes to housecleaning.

Oh, the humanity.

Nearly 40 percent of men surveyed said, however, that they would clean more regularly if it didn't take so much time. Afrouzi's recommendation, in this case, was "not to do it all at once," echoing what Don Aslett _ the "Don Juan of the John" _ told me in 1997. (See that article at http://goo.gl/S4qpoH.)

"Segment your home into three, four, or five different areas _ and tackle one or two zones over a couple of days," said Afrouzi.

Another recommendation: Streamline your tools.

"You only have to grab one bottle or tool and won't waste time cycling through wet wipes, sponges, dusters, and the rest of the cleaning-bucket clan," Afrouzi said. Double up on time, he said, explaining, "The magic of automatic cleaning appliances like dishwashers is that they cut chore time in half _ so what do you do with the other half?

"Knock out another one."

Despite the cogent advice, it is clear that some people are cleaners, and some are not.

I say gender really makes little difference.