IT'S not officially spring for another 12 days, yet I'm a slave to cleaning. I've always rubbished spring cleaning. The idea of people rushing around with a mop and bucket at a certain time of year is, to me, bizarre.

Maybe it is yet another symptom of growing older, but for the past couple of years around early March, I have felt the urge to dust, polish and vacuum.

This year the compulsion to clean has been worse than ever. I have caught myself looking anxiously at dusty surfaces. Last night I wiped the TV screen. Granted, I only got up to do it because Robson Green was looking a bit grey, but I did it all the same. It was long overdue - one of my friends recently asked when we would be getting a colour television.

But it didn't stop there. I also flicked down a couple of cobwebs that had hung around in the kitchen for months. This involved getting a chair from another room, and seeking out a duster from the back of a cupboard: a major effort on my part.

I also rubbed a few grubby marks off the stair carpet. They appeared last autumn, but only in the past couple of weeks have they got on my nerves.

At this time of year things are starting to brighten up, with shafts of sunlight throwing every fingerprint on the windows and scuff on the skirting board into sharp relief.

In the past I hardly noticed, and if I did I'd never think of doing anything about it. But now I'm behaving like people did in years gone by, when managing a house was a military operation, when furniture was covered with dust sheets, walls were washed down, floors scrubbed, carpets beaten and chimneys swept.

I tell you, if there was one of those old Good Housekeeping manuals to hand, I'd follow it.

I've even cleaned under the bed, which as usual disgorged 40 fluff-covered Biros (how they got there is a mystery, neither me or my husband write in bed. It's like the lone-socks-in-the-washing machine phenomenon).

And I'm taking an active interest in adverts for cleaning fluids. The tile cleaner that looks strong enough to clean rust off ocean-floor shipwrecks, the 'magic' telescopic broom that extends higher than Nelson's Column and the floor cleaner that cuts through grease, leaving them like mirrors.

I've invested in a couple of these products, but the results never look the same as they do on the telly. Nothing 'cuts through' anything easily. It takes a lot of elbow grease. And it's time consuming. So much so that I've neglected everything else. I've been so wrapped up with cleaning that the cupboards are bare and the children are starving.

The house is looking less like Miss Haversham's and more like a Wimpey show home every day.

It's just not me. I'm messy by nature. I like mess. I like cushions and shoes and felt tip pens all over the place and pictures raked at an angle. Yet now I'm like Jack Lemmon in The Odd Couple. Even my husband has protested over the smell of antiseptic sprays in the kitchen, not to mention the children being scared to go upstairs with their shoes on.

Something deep in my subconscious has stirred and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. Maybe I've just grown out of living like a student. Still, my mother will be thrilled. Next time she visits she needn't bring her usual supply of rubber gloves and J-Cloths.

Updated: 09:21 Tuesday, March 08, 2005