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In 2007 James Valentine revealed to me why he is free of domestic guilt.
His book Spotfull was out, as a reaction to people who spend their entire weekend cleaning their white goods.
This is from the Maynard International Studios 2007 archive in the hope that James may persuade you to have a bath instead of cleaning it.
James Valentine official website
Maynard: James, what is Spot Full all about? I think from my perspective, I find it dull on the radio, but you are a recovering cleaning addict. What’s the story?
James Valentine: It’s true. Look it, it’s Spotfull is the book I’ve written as a response to the Spotless phenomenon and I’ve had to do,
Maynard: and that’s just insane. There’s too many fuss budgets out there with time on the hands.
James Valentine: Exactly. And I had to do this because, I am responsible for Spotless. I introduced Shannon Lush and the whole bicarbonate and soda and vinegar cleaning phenomenon to Australia, and I apologize for it. I’m sorry. I dunno what, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know the genie. I was letting outta the bottle when that happened. Turn the nation into a group of people obsessed with cleaning, with getting rid of all spots and stains. And I just thought, I don’t think people really live like that. I think people live like pigs. Spotfull encourages you to live free of domestic guilt, to embrace your inner a slob and just lie back and relax.
Maynard: Yes. So I’m a single guy living on my own.
James Valentine: Oh, you are one. You. Prime Spotfull candidate.
Maynard: See, I don’t clean till I say it’s time to clean or my parents or a date is coming over.
James Valentine: Yeah, I would suggest the true Spotfull approach would be that the date never comes over. What are motels for?
Maynard: Exactly.
James Valentine: And it’s cheaper. It’s cheaper. You would be better off hiring a nice room in a hotel than you would be trying to clean up your pad, I would imagine, mate.
Maynard: And you can get away with free drinks there if you do it properly.
James Valentine: I advocate it’s cheaper to stay in five star hotels than renovate.
No one should ever bother to renovate a home. You should simply move out and live in five star luxury.
Maynard: I read that chapter because apparently the renovation cost can change. Where the cost of checking into a five star hotel doesn’t,
James Valentine: it doesn’t. You know what you’re in for. If you decide to renovate your falling down home the quote will be 100,000. You’ll end up paying 200,000. When you go to check into a hotel, they say, thank you very much. It’s 200 a night and it stays 200 a night. So you know what you’re in for and it’s much better. And if you renovate a home, you turn it into a home that has to be cleaned.
Maynard: James, one thing that you get to in your book is that there’s a few letters from people there, and one of the letters I quite enjoyed that there’s, there are some people who make a large part of their weekend, they plan to do things on their weekend that I would consider unusual, for example, planning to clean your freezer.
James Valentine: Yeah. I just find that astonishing, that somebody would think is I’m wanting to clean my freezer and I’d like some hints about how to do that. And my suggestion is join a tennis club. Perhaps go bush walking. Have you ever been to an art gallery? Do anything but clean your freezer.
Freezers can just sit there, can’t they? I wouldn’t clean the freezer if I was trying to sell the fridge. You just take it outside, it melts, it disappears. And that’s about it. Isn’t it. It would never occur to me to clean a freezer.
Maynard: Naturally I have the whole thing of cleaning the freezer because I move about every 2 years.
So the freezer cleans itself during the moving process?
James Valentine: Exactly. In the days leading up to that move, you probably don’t need to shop either, because there’d be all sorts of frozen sausages that are suddenly emerging from the freezer. There’d be at least six fish fingers. There’d be a pizza base. That you’d long ago didn’t even know you had. You thought that was just the floor of the freezer.
Maynard: You live like a king.
James Valentine: You live like a king for three days until you move. But also a king that has days full of surprises. Oh my God, look what the freezer has thrown up. It’s like being in Siberia and finding a mammoth.
Maynard: You do make a point of people that, that try and feel good about saving their leftover food by keeping their leftovers. And this is a two step process. One, it makes you feel good about the environment and the world and your ipo, and also you think you may be saving money.
And I’ve found this to be a false societal conscience and a false economy. Your thoughts Mr. Valentine.
James Valentine: Maynard, , this is a direct, direct experience from living with my wife Joanne, who does this, you order Green chicken curry. Green chicken curry comes, you eat about half of it and she puts it the takeaway container in the fridge, and you look at her and go, are you really gonna have that tomorrow?
Are you really gonna have that green chicken curry for lunch tomorrow? She says, I might. And I know from 20 years experience, she won’t any later than about four o’clock the next day. She would take that outta the fridge and go, do you think this is all right to eat? And you’d go, yeah, it’s fine.
She’d go I’m not sure. And then she might put it back. But it’s the last thing she wants to do is put it in the bin because A, she thinks that , all she hears is her mother saying there are starving children in Ethiopia, which is where they were starving when we were children, and now they are again.
And then. She also thinks that somehow the mortgage will be paid if she puts that green chicken curry into the fridge for a while, that will help with the payments. I say straight into the bin and get rid of it.
Maynard: And another way I find it interesting from your book here is the problem of mildew spots on old baby clothes. Now, I wouldn’t be aware this problem even existed.
James Valentine: See if you’ve if you have children, this is a common question that you get, again, on the Shannon Lush sort of segment is where people ring up and say, I’ve got some old baby clothes and they’ve been in a bag for some years, and I’d like to clean them up.
What should I do? I. What I find interesting in that question is that there’s this lovely, there’s a sentimental moment where your child grows out of the toddler clothes and you clean out a drawer and you think, oh, that’s a lovely piece. I’m going to keep that. And you put it away somewhere carefully. The question is, keep it. For what are you thinking at 18? You might pull it when the child’s 18. You might pull it out and look at it and go, this is what you wore as a toddler when that child has children of their own. You’ll pass on some then 25-year-old baby clothes. Are you just gonna get them out every now and again just to have a little look at one or two pieces?
Certainly, a fine christening robe a lovely little outfit perhaps, but people keep a whole lot of this stuff with the idea that somehow they’re gonna do something with it. My general approach to mildew on the baby clothes is you should have got rid of that stuff a long time ago.
Maynard: And what has been the reaction of the Shannon Lush and the whole crowd to to you taking the poodle out of the whole thing?
James Valentine: They love it. They love it. How much does Shannon Lush love the fact that she’s gone from obscurity to nothing? Via my radio show and ABC books, she sold 600,000 copies of Spotless and Speed Cleaning and Comfy. Now she’s reached a point where she’s so popular and so well known, it’s worth my time satirising her. There is no greater compliment. None more than parody.
Maynard: And one last question. What is the optimum length of time before changing the sheets on a bed?
James Valentine: I think when when you can’t sleep, when it’s reached a point where you’re going, I really can’t sleep. But otherwise, up until then, if you’re getting in and you’re cozy, eh, why are you, what are you worried about?
Maynard: So when the bed texture starts to resemble the Plains of Nazca, something like that.
James valentine: You know it because you can’t quite get to sleep.
Maynard: James Valentine, dirt up!
James Valentine: That’s me.
