The irony wasn't lost on the photographer, who tells us she gave this book, featuring Kim and Aggie from How Clean Is Your House?, to her friend as a Christmas gift a few years back and found it recently in this dirty state under the kitchen sink!
I’m a voyeur at heart, I’ll admit it. And with reality TV, I can get my fix on almost any channel on the air. I can watch people lose weight, balance their chequebooks, renovate a house, become a model, give money away, drink beer while travelling around the world and pretty well anything else you can think of.
My new favourite reality show is the Canadian version of How Clean Is Your House? Here, it’s called Kim’s Rude Awakenings, starring that British prison guard-like Queen of Clean Kim Woodburn (she of the feather-fringed plastic gloves) and her new sidekick, Mike Chalut.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out on W Network, where the Canadian version airs on Mondays at 8:30 p.m. It’s like watching Jerry Springer, only instead of the hapless lovelorn making fools of themselves on national TV, it’s filthy, messy families.
In one episode, the mother of two grown boys still living at home had been sleeping on a recliner in the living room for two years because her bedroom was a disaster, with clothes and everything else piled all over the bed. She claimed she couldn’t keep the house clean all by herself because of her arthritis and the boys, including her husband, wouldn’t do it for her.
Ha! Even the laziest person on earth could stand up long enough to throw everything off the bed and onto the floor in order to get a good night’s rest. Was this family for real?
Another episode featured equally lazy teenagers and parents who apparently have no idea that butts need to be kicked and clean-up orders issued and observed — or else!
Real or not, the show is good for a laugh. And like the British version, we get Kim’s advice on how to wipe the grime off the sink or polish the furniture without an arsenal of chemical cleaners. Brings you back to the days when “green” didn’t mean double the price. Mostly, Kim teaches how to use things like baking soda and table salt to get the job done.
Very refreshing.
Back to those lazy teens. In answer to a question from a working mom on how she can get her kids to help out with the cleaning, Kim advises:
“You’re a working mother you say, with two teenagers. You know I think what may have happened here dear is – bless you – you’ve spoilt them. But there are things you can do. Teach your children the basics of cleaning and how to do their own laundry and my love, if they don’t do it, don’t do it for them! Teenagers want to be independent so learning to do their own laundry is a very good step in that direction. If they run out of knickers they’ll remember to put the wash on next time!”
If anyone knows how to shape up lazy Canadian teens, it’s Kim. She’s a tough one: according to her 2006 autobiography, Kim delivered a premature stillborn baby boy alone in her apartment in 1965 (her boyfriend ditched her when she told him she was pregnant).
What did the 23-year-old single mother-to-be do? Alone, scared and embarrassed, she wrapped the tiny body in a tea towel and placed it in a bowl. According to her story, Kim then slept beside it all night, before leaving, traumatized and desperate for a return to normal, to go to work the next morning. After work, she took the six-month-old baby’s body to a park in Liverpool and buried him, using a spoon to dig the grave.
“I told him I was so sorry for what had happened and how great we would have been together. I told him he’d have been a fine boy but that it just wasn’t to be. I had never felt more wretched in my whole life.
“I still talk to my son now,” she says in her book. “The deep sadness doesn’t go away.”
When the story came out — her autobiography was serialized exclusively in the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday — she was interviewed by police and faced the prospect of jail time for illegally burying a body.
“I know the offence carries a two-year prison sentence, but do you know what? I don’t care. I really don’t care,” she told the British magazine First when the story came out. “I don’t want to go to prison, but if it has to be, it has to be.”
Fortunately, Kim never went to prison for burying her secret. She believes that sad experience helped shaped her life and made her who she is today, a happily married woman who went from housekeeper to 60-something superstar on How Clean Is Your House? Co-starring Aggie MacKenzie, the show airs on Britain’s Channel 4 and in Canada on W Network on Mondays at 8 p.m.
Wonder if you would pass the clean test? Try the How Clean Is Your House? quiz and find out.
I took the quiz and for the record, I have been crowned “A Cleaning Queen!” No surprise there! Here’s how the quiz master describe me:
“Clean, clean, clean. It’s surprising you’ve got a social life, you’re so busy tidying up! You just love preening and primping your house, getting everything perfect. You know all the secrets of clean and you’re the first to give Kim and Aggie’s tips to your friends and even some of your own. It’s very noble, but don’t you think you may be verging on the obsessive? Sometimes it’s OK to let things go a little and put your feet up… we won’t tell anyone, promise!”
Guess I’d better go put my feet up now!