Dreaming of a White Christmas? Not so Fast: Thanksgiving, Christmas Named Messiest Holidays

Paper Towels, Dishwashing Liquid Top Weapons to Combat Kitchen Mess

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Nov 28, 2011, 09:03 ET

ATLANTA, Nov. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- With the holiday season nearing, it's almost time to deck the halls – and scrub them too. Thanksgiving and Christmas may provide extra time to spend with friends and family, but they also trigger more time spent house cleaning.

At-home Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers can nearly triple the weekly cleaning time spent by women, according to a national survey conducted by StrategyOne and commissioned by Georgia-Pacific, the maker of Brawny® paper towels. Already, women spend almost two hours (116 minutes) cleaning their homes each week. Holiday gatherings can add almost four hours to that, including time spent before and after at-home parties.

Whether messes are caused by an overflow of sweet potato casserole or puddles of spilled gravy, the survey found Thanksgiving and Christmas to be the messiest holidays of all. Getting clean for the holidays means spending nearly two hours (115 minutes) tidying up before get-togethers and another hour and a half (85 minutes) sopping up after at-home parties end.

Christmas is considered the messiest holiday by majority of women (57.3 percent) followed by Thanksgiving (32.5 percent), New Year's (3.4 percent) and Halloween (2.5 percent).

But no matter the time of year, the survey found that dishwashing liquid and paper towels are the hallowed one-two punch in the kitchen, and the most important cleaning tools for someone making the kitchen spotless for guests and loved ones.

And while cleaning takes time, it's hardly wasted. It's what makes moms happy. Working and stay-at home moms feel most judged by how clean their homes are, according to Working Mother magazine. Eighty-four percent of American women in the Georgia-Pacific survey say their home is anywhere from extremely clean to moderately clean on a typical day, and 83 percent believe others would agree with that assessment.

"Cleaning may seem mundane and time-consuming, but it also produces genuine feel-good moments," said Lanier Thomas, Director of Marketing, Brawny®. "We wanted to uncover cleaning habits, practices, partnerships and perceptions among today's women and families and get an accurate sense of just how time-consuming cleaning has become. In addition to sharing products that help people clean efficiently, we also enjoy hearing about our customers' cleaning challenges, triumphs and humorous moments. These insights push us to create products that matter most to consumers."

When it comes to help, two-thirds of women said they would like assistance with cleaning, more so than other household tasks including cooking (11.6 percent), laundry (6.4 percent), ironing (4.8 percent), pet care (3.9 percent) and baby-sitting (3.3 percent). Yet, despite the desire for assistance, only one-third of women are actually receiving help with household chores. Among those that receive help, half typically receive it from their spouse or significant other and 17 percent receive it from their child/children.

Other cleaning trends found include:

Cleaning up after pets (27.1 percent) was noted as being just as hard as cleaning up after their spouse or significant other (25.6 percent) and more difficult than cleaning up after their child (20.1 percent).
Scrubbing the tub/shower (30 percent), cleaning the toilet (14.7 percent), mopping the floor (13.5 percent), dusting (11.4 percent) and cleaning windows (11 percent) are the chores women least enjoy.
Taking out the trash is the one task women are most likely to rely on a housemate to handle (36.8 percent), followed by vacuuming (10.9 percent) and cooking (8.5 percent).

For more information about Brawny® paper towels or the survey, please visit www.brawnytowels.com or join the discussion at www.facebook.com/brawnytowels.

About Georgia-Pacific: Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia-Pacific is one of the world's leading manufacturers and marketers of building products, tissue, packaging, paper, cellulose and related chemicals. The company employs nearly 40,000 people at approximately 300 locations in North America, South America and Europe.

Partners in Cleaning Survey: StrategyOne, a full-service corporate positioning, market research and strategic communications agency, conducted a nationwide survey to investigate cleaning habits, perceptions and messes in the lives of today's women. The survey was conducted online among a sample of 1,010 women aged 18 and older from October 4-10, 2011 using the field services of e-Rewards. The margin of sampling error at the 95% level of confidence is ±3.08 for total respondents.

SOURCE Georgia-Pacific