ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES BARRON THE NEW YORK TIMES
And now, the ultimate irony about Generation X, the grunge group that has made irony its trademark: 20-somethings are not slackers when it comes to housecleaning. They care more about scrubbing the floors, wiping grease off the stove and washing the windows than graying, stressed-out baby boomers.
In fact, Generation X'ers say they devote about as much energy and effort to search-and-destroy missions against dust bunnies and out-of-the-way cobwebs as people in the generation older than the boomers - people in their 50s and 60s. People old enough to be their parents, if not their grandparents.
Of course, in a society where cleanliness has long been equated with godliness, where Mr. Clean and the White Tornado regularly do battle against what Madison Avenue christened ``deep down dirt,'' it took a survey to find this out.
The survey was done by a time-and-motion expert, so it did not ask the kind of really tough personal questions that could keep Ann Landers and Dear Abby going for column after column. For example: Do you do housework in the nude, and if so, do you turn off the vacuum cleaner before you answer the door, or do you leave it running?
But maybe, just maybe, the results signal the end of the trend toward dirtier, dustier homes that experts have been trumpeting since the 1980s, when surveys showed that Americans were cleaning less and buying fewer cleaning products. Fifty-five percent of the people in the new survey, conducted for the Soap and Detergent Association, a Manhattan-based trade group, said neatness was very important, up six percentage points from when the same question was asked on a similar survey in 1975.
Generation X may not make old-fashioned rituals like spring cleaning into the top-to-bottom ordeals they once were. But 20-somethings are apparently more willing to get out the squeegees and buckets, indoors or out, than those in the 30-to-49 age bracket, the so-called baby boomers, who say, ``Why bother?''
``Pizza boxes and clothes scattered on the floor aren't what Generation X'ers are all about,'' said Dr. John P. Robinson, 61, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, who conducted the survey. ``Generation X'ers are extremely picky about the way they take care of their homes.''
They are also picky about the way they take care of themselves. He said some Generation X'ers in the survey reported taking several showers a day.
This raises the question, Did the people questioned tell the truth?
Robinson cannot say for sure. He did not personally visit the homes of the 1,000 Americans who were called at random; he relied on what they said over the phone (the margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points). So he did not run his own white-gloved finger over the respondents' kitchen counters to see whether they were spotless. But he said Generation X respondents clearly valued cleanliness.
One question in the survey asked the respondents to rate their satisfaction with the cleanliness of their own homes, compared with the cleanliness of a typical home (which he did not define).
Of the Generation X respondents, 62 percent said they were satisfied with the cleanliness of their own homes, but only 25 percent said they were satisfied with the typical home.
By contrast, only 43 percent of the baby boomers said they were satisfied with their own homes; the figure for the typical home dropped to 20 percent. Among respondents in the 50-plus age group, 59 percent said they were satisfied with their own homes, while the figure for the typical home jumped to 31 percent.
``We were very surprised to find these kinds of generational differences,'' Robinson said. ``I think it was an expectation that people in succeeding generations would be less interested in housework, more interested in outside kinds of things, not in keeping the home clean.''
Robinson said the slothfulness of baby boomers may reflect the fact that they are at an age when they are trying to do everything: raise children and sometimes grandchildren, hold jobs and, to whatever extent they can, clean house.
``Boomers are strapped for time, and something has to give,'' he said. ``It's not that boomers don't clean; it's just that they focus on the most used and most visible rooms - the bathroom and the kitchen - and if they don't have the time, they let the other areas of the house go.''
This may explain why baby boomers are more satisfied with how clean their own homes are than they were in a similar survey in 1981. Of the 30-to-49 age group in Robinson's survey, 48 percent said they were satisfied, up from 20 percent in 1981.
The current figure is in the same range as the 51 percent figure for the 18-to-29 age group (up from 25 percent in 1981). And among those 50 or older, the current figure was 43 percent, up from 31 percent in 1981.
But people who consider themselves ``picky'' housekeepers are not so satisfied. Only 39 percent said their homes were clean enough to eat off the floor. That was down 3 percentage points from the 1975 survey.
Americans often mumble ``neat and clean'' in the same breath, but there is a difference. Over all, 18 percent said clean was the more important; 72 percent said neat, and 10 percent said the two were about equal.
Robinson said that no one in his survey underestimated the difficulty of housework. Some 60 percent of the Generation X'ers (along with 55 percent of the baby boomers and 46 percent of the 50-plus respondents) said housework was far more demanding than watching television, but somewhat less demanding than a job. On the other hand, they said television took more effort now than it did in the 1975 survey.
He also found that men were doing more housework, and their enjoyment had gone up. And 18 percent of the respondents in his latest survey had paid housekeepers, roughly the same as in 1975. ``The percentage hasn't gone up, though I think people generally feel it has,'' he said. ``There's a feeling that by the time you find somebody and arrange for their transportation, you might as well do it yourself. There are hassles involved.''
And what about Robinson's place? How clean is it?
Apparently, he's out of sync with his own generation.
``I'm kicking a few dust bunnies out of the way,'' Robinson said. ``The only thing I can say is, I'm improving. I probably fall short of national expectations. I would not recommend open-heart surgery on my kitchen floor.''
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Illustration by Robert Lunsford. color.by CNB