NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

Wendyl Nissen: The house may be going but those stains have to stay

By Wendyl Nissen
NZ Herald·
22 Aug, 2013 09:30 PM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Photo / Thinkstock

Photo / Thinkstock

Opinion by Wendyl NissenLearn more

I didn't notice the looks passing between my husband and daughter until I had finished cleaning the ceiling, the walls, the window frames, the door frames and the skirting boards of my bedroom.

I was having a spring clean.

"You're not about to give birth are you?" he said as he edged around the ladder to get to bed that night.

The last time I spring-cleaned was more than 15 years ago when I was about to have a baby.

"What is happening to the house?" said my confused daughter who came home to find all the furniture in the lounge sitting in the middle of the room - all the better for getting at those nasty dust balls hiding behind the couch.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

In the old days women did a spring clean every year - in spring. My old books tell of days spent planning for a spring clean, cooking ham and pies in advance, dressing in bloomers and making a lotion for chapped hands which would certainly result from all that cleaning.

I'm staring at just such a pair of chapped hands as I type.

I would like to say that my supportive wife challenge has simply allowed me to morph into an old-fashioned kind of woman and thus, the spring clean.

But it is something far more sinister. We're thinking of selling the house.

My lovely old villa, home to our mad family for 13 years, the house where I've been the happiest.

Discover more

Opinion

Wendyl Nissen: 'Supportive' still needs a bit of help

25 Jul 09:30 PM
Opinion

Wendyl Nissen: What a hairstyle says about a wife

01 Aug 09:40 PM
Opinion

Wendyl Nissen: Womanhood not about being mum

08 Aug 05:30 PM
Opinion

Wendyl Nissen: Shades of grey don't come lightly

29 Aug 09:50 PM

But before I can let anyone in to look at it, namely real estate agents, I need it to be seemly.

I'm not one of those people who have spent a lot of their lives cleaning my house from top to toe. It gets dusted and vacuumed but there are corners and crannies that really haven't seen a lot of attention for all of the 13 years we've been here.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

My friends and family have never minded this. And so it has remained. Even the children's bathroom which I hadn't entered for 13 years, choosing to designate it as an experimental room. The idea being that the children would be responsible for cleaning it themselves, and if it got filthy they would live with it.

It did work - all our adult children got very clean bathrooms once they left home - but for years it was not very nice. And occasionally my drunk friends would stumble into the wrong bathroom and emerge pale and gasping for breath.

It took me a day to clean that bathroom from top to toe. A day I'd rather forget, but a necessary part of my spring clean.

Because I cannot have strangers coming into my house and commenting.

"Calls herself a Green Goddess but she's filthy. Dust everywhere," is the imaginary voice in my head as I scrub and scrape. "It's like she's a mad old hippy who's been squatting in her own house," is another.

This one is real and belongs to a friend's mother. He had just bought his new house off hippies and she had arrived with her cleaner to get rid of the spiders and filth.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

I have pet spiders in every room of my house. Their webs are now gone, but they are still all alive where I gently placed them under eaves outside.

I am also possibly reacting to the time we sold another old villa in Grey Lynn. The real estate agent sold it, took her commission and then bad-mouthed me around town. I heard that I was "filthy, dust everywhere".

At the time my husband and I were both editing weekly magazines and had four teenagers and a 6-month-old baby. We had a cleaner but I didn't have a lot of time to check that all the bedrooms were ship-shape. I remember not really giving too much of a damn, I was a busy woman.

But somewhere deep down, that horrible woman planted a seed of shame which in the past few weeks has found purchase in the mind of a supportive wife.

It's been three weeks and I still won't let the agents in. Everywhere I look is a stain that needs to stay: the one I made when I invented my first cleaning product and failed, the one made by strips of paint pulled off the front door where my family has taped messages to each other over the years, and the one left on the grubby skirting board where our old, now deceased dog lay most days for 13 years.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Lifestyle

Royals

'Scapegoats': DJ blames bosses for tragedy linked to royal prank

07 Jul 09:08 PM
Lifestyle

No more crying in the kitchen: 'Tearless' onions launch in NZ - at a cost

07 Jul 06:27 AM
Premium
Lifestyle

My weird week on a Government-prescribed ‘perfect diet’

07 Jul 06:00 AM

Sponsored: Get your kids involved in your reno

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

'Scapegoats': DJ blames bosses for tragedy linked to royal prank

'Scapegoats': DJ blames bosses for tragedy linked to royal prank

07 Jul 09:08 PM

Michael Christian made a hoax call to the Princess of Wales' hospital in 2012.

No more crying in the kitchen: 'Tearless' onions launch in NZ - at a cost

No more crying in the kitchen: 'Tearless' onions launch in NZ - at a cost

07 Jul 06:27 AM
Premium
My weird week on a Government-prescribed ‘perfect diet’

My weird week on a Government-prescribed ‘perfect diet’

07 Jul 06:00 AM
Premium
What makes someone cool? These six traits it seems

What makes someone cool? These six traits it seems

07 Jul 01:08 AM
Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP