IT was when I found myself rubbing the oven with baby oil that I realised there had been a fundamental shift in my attitude to cleaning.

In case you now have a frighteningly vivid image of me in some fetishistic rubber outfit caressing household implements, let me explain.

I recently got a new brushed steel range - I would say 'we' got one, but my other half would deny that he even knows where the kitchen is, let alone how to switch the oven on - which I soon realised was lovely to look at, but impossible to keep clean - a bit like Kate Moss.

If I so much as thought about putting the tea on - a rare occurrence but it happens - it immediately covered itself in unsightly water marks that no amount of scrubbing and buffing could shift. I could exchange the swirly patterns for different but equally irritating swirly patterns, but I couldn't actually get rid of them.

So I turned to my good friends Vim and Scraggie. At least I think that's what they're called. You know the ones I mean; one looks like Danny La Rue on his day off and the other looks like a pipe-cleaner wearing specs. They do a programme on the telly called What A Load Of Mucky Mingers or something like that and have written a book for people who don't know one end of a waffle-weave washcloth from the other.

Naturally, I have my own hardback edition which, up until now, I have never opened. If the truth be told it has actually spent the last year or so stuffed in amongst a dusty pile of books that stop my desk from listing dangerously to the east, causing me and my computer to slide in a comedy fashion from one end to the other.

After painfully banging my head on the underside of the desk (twice) and five minutes or so of muffled swearing, I finally managed to find the book and flicked to the kitchen section. And there it was: "Stainless steel cookers and hoods can be kept shiny and streak-free by using a spray lubricant and wiping over with paper towels, which will also make cleaning easier. Baby oil has a similar effect."

I have to say that at first I thought Vim and Scraggie had been sniffing their own cleaning products and, high on Mr Sheen, had simply scribbled down any old nonsense for a bit of a laugh. Rub your oven with baby oil! Stuff your cushions with belly button fluff! Clean the car with talcum powder and piccalilli!

Then I read about Joan Duxbury, the North Yorkshire housewife featured in the Discovery Home and Health channel's new series Cleanaholics.

She brushes the tassels on her rug so they all lay uniformly flat; she places her cushions at specified angles; she empties and washes her Dyson every day; she polishes her loo at least four times a week; and - drum roll please - she rubs her cooker with baby oil!

So that's why my other half came home the other day to find me gently caressing our new cooker with the stuff. I hadn't finally flipped, as he always claims I will do one day, I was simply being a little house-proud for once. And it felt good.

I'm not generally much of a cleaner. My house is not exactly filthy, although I would strongly advise against inspecting our downstairs loo unless you have a burning desire to experience the delights of cholera, but it's not exactly spick and span either.

But maybe this could be a turning point. Maybe I could come to regard cleaning as a joy, and not as a mind-numbingly boring chore that only really has to be done when a royal visitation from Grandma Madge is imminent. Maybe I'll get myself some 'fun', bejewelled rubber gloves like Vim and learn to scrub a grill pan with the scientific precision of Scraggie. Maybe my house will become a gleaming testament to my newfound love of dusting, brushing and scrubbing.

Maybe not.

Updated: 09:15 Monday, May 01, 2006