Crazes come and go, and while it was once fashionable for people to carry out a thorough clean of their homes every spring, nowadays we'd rather take the little and often approach.

Research carried out by renewable electricity company Good Energy shows that less than half of all homeowners still do an annual blitz clean. Almost a third admitted to never having attempted one.

Four in ten of those questioned said they thought spring cleaning was old fashioned, and almost two thirds claimed their parents and grandparents were more concerned about having a clean house.

But with so many vintage trends making a comeback in the noughties, isn't it time we got out our rubber gloves and our feather dusters and gave spring cleaning another chance?

In response to its research, Good Energy teamed up with the National Trust to offer some retro cleaning tips designed to help homeowners embrace spring cleaning the old fashioned way.

They include starting at the top and working downwards, allowing dust to fall to the floor where it can be vacuumed or swept away, and mixing lemon juice with water to create a zingy air freshener.

In fact, lemons seem to have been fairly widely used back in the day before fancy chemical products entered the supermarkets.

For example, mix together one part white vinegar with two parts water and a squeeze of lemon juice, and you can create an effective surface cleaner for use in kitchens, bathrooms and on floors.

Lemons, combined with olive oil, can also be used as an alternative to furniture polish, leaving wooden items shiny and dirt-free.

Other top vintage tips include displaying bunches of lavender around the house to keep moths at bay and sprinkling rugs with bicarbonate of soda and vacuuming away to remove dirt odours.

Posted by Toni Tsocheva

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