​I’m not alone when it comes to laundry sins

​Cleaning up has always been big business and mucky houses have long passed as entertainment - think Kim and Aggie and the many variations of programmes about super hoarders.

But now social media platforms such as TikTok are home to videos telling people with nothing better to do and who are too young to watch This Morning how to nail mundane household tasks. One such creator, or influencer to give her the correct title, has written a book which is full of her tips about how to do the laundry properly.

Having read the highlights while stealing 15 minutes with the Sunday newspaper, it is now very clear that Mrs Tapp has been right the past 25 years, and I have indeed been doing the laundry wrong all of this time.

Like many long-suffering better halves, Mrs Tapp has long suspected that my ineptitude with a washing machine is part of an elaborate plot to excuse me permanently from the most demanding chore that there is in a house with a teenage girl and a seven-year-old dirt magnet.

While I can understand her logic - my risible efforts to get through the endless stream of dirty washing are Mr Bean-esqe - I am not cunning enough to invent a ruse that would involve time and nous that I simply don’t have. The truth is that I never really pay that much attention to what I bung into the machine while racing around the house in an attempt to find missing shoes and coats before embarking on my daily equivalent of Russian roulette, aka the school run.

I’m often accused of the heinous crime of mixing up darks and lights and my go-to protests that anything other than white is technically a dark is now wearing thin, meaning that I should probably come up with a new line of defence.

I’m also often reminded that our futuristic looking washer has a wide variety of settings and not just ‘daily wash’ at 40 degrees. Then there is the tedious long-running debate about whether some, more expensive, pieces of clothing are tuned inside out before they are bunged into the drum and don’t even bother explaining how I should treat really soiled clothing before I press the on button and go back to trying to get more than four points on Radio 2’s new ultra difficult music quiz.

The aforementioned book tackles what people should do when confronted with a red wine stain on their favourite pair of chinos and apparently, the answer is never white wine, which has long been taken as gospel by gullible types like me. If you are really interested, the answer is white vinegar apparently.

On the advice of a wise pal who knows about such things, I do occasionally use Fairy Liquid on the most stubborn stains and it does work, although not on oil based paints and disgusting slime that comes in the pots that little boys are so attracted to.

Other causes of minor domestics at home include my apparent inability to properly read labels on every item of clothing in order to establish whether or not they are able to go into the tumble dryer. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve frantically stretched a pair of prized jeans or an expensive jumper that has shrunk a size or three. I’m now under strict instructions to set aside any damp, washed clothes that I’m unsure of and wait until the most sensible person in the household returns from work.

Thanks to the power of modern media, I now know that I’m certainly not alone when it comes to not having a clue about whether or not a cashmere sweater should go on a hot wash.