Cooking, decluttering and tidying up are chores Britons are more likely to enjoy doing
Doing the chores is, well, a chore. Or is it? New YouGov polling reveals that there are only a few household tasks that large numbers of Britons actively loathe, with many in fact more liked that disliked.
Cooking is the most popular chore of those polled, with a clear majority of Britons (57%) saying they like rustling up a meal, alongside a further 21% who neither like nor dislike it. For 18% of the public, though, cooking is a task they openly dislike.
Making things neat also seems to be somewhat rewarding, with nearly half of Britons (46%) saying they enjoy decluttering or clearing out their house, alongside 24% who are not bothered either way. Similarly, 40% say they like tidying up, with nearly as many (35%) neither liking nor disliking it. In both cases, only roughly a quarter (22-27%) actively dislike the chores.
Britons are also more likely to be positive than negative about vacuuming (34% vs 26%) or doing the laundry (32% vs 22%).
Chores like cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the living room, making the bed, or doing the washing up split opinion, with 25-31% of the public liking doing them and 24-31% disliking them. In all four cases, between 34-41% neither like nor dislike completing them.
Four housework staples stand out as having the fewest outright fans – ironing, cleaning the bathroom, dusting, and taking the bins out. Just one in six Britons (16-18%) claim to like doing any of them, though how the rest of the public feel about them is varied.
Although similar numbers dislike dusting, ironing or cleaning the bathroom (41-45%), it’s ironing that has the strongest claim to being the most hated chore overall: not only do a higher proportion say they dislike it a lot (25% vs 16-18% for the other two chores), roughly three times as many Brits avoid doing the ironing altogether (20% vs 7%). This makes it the only chore polled where the number of dislikers (43%) outnumber the combined total of those with a positive or neutral opinion of the chore (37%).
By contrast, taking the bins out is more likely to earn a shrug, with 43% neither liking nor disliking it, though a third of Britons (32%) do actively dislike doing it.
Which chores do men and women enjoy doing?
Taking the bins out is the chore polled with the biggest gender divide. While men are equally likely to say they like (24%) and dislike doing it (22%), only 9% of women say they relish taking the bins out, relative to 42% who dislike having to do it. Women are also more likely than men (11% vs 4%) to say they never take the bins out, the greatest difference across the chores polled.
Washing up also shows a big split, with men being more likely to view doing the dishes favourably than unfavourably (31% vs 24%), while women are nearly twice as likely to see the essential piece of housework in a negative light than a positive one (38% vs 21%).
Men are also less likely than women to have negative opinions of cooking (14% vs 22%) and ironing (37% vs 48%), while being less likely to have a positive opinion of decluttering (40% vs 53%) and doing the laundry (26% vs 37%).
Nonetheless, it does remain the case that women are more likely to being doing the housework than men, with 69% of women saying they do all or most of the chores in their household, compared to 41% of men claiming to do so.
Which chores do you enjoy doing? What do you think about housework in general, and everything else? Have your say, join the YouGov panel, and get paid to share your thoughts. Sign up here.
Photo: Getty
