Service that fills a vacuum: Would you feel guilty if someone else did your cleaning? Hester Lacey investigates the resurgence of the 'domestic'

'I DON'T really know how to iron a shirt,' admits Daniel Havering, aged 24, 'but I don't want to know, because then I might end up doing it.' He is also unashamedly deficient in other domestic areas. 'I've never changed our vacuum cleaner bag - though I'm sure I could if I really wanted to.'

Daniel is cheerfully prepared to pass through life without any close acquaintance with iron, dishcloth or lavatory brush. He is one of a growing number of young householders tossing rubber gloves and dusters aside and paying someone else to do their dirty work.

'Our client-base has dramatically changed over the last three years,' confirms Pam Bader, chief executive of Molly Maid UK, one of Britain's largest domestic cleaning companies and planning to expand further next year.

'I would say that well over half are now young professionals. Once we would never have dreamed of putting leaflets into two-up two-down houses. Now we get a lot of business from there. It's an affordable necessity - it means going out for one meal less a month, or giving up a new blouse or a hair-do.'

Daniel, a salesman who shares a Birmingham flat with two friends, found that life was chaos before he took on his cleaning lady. 'Nobody stuck to the cleaning rota and we just weren't very good at it anyway. We found Elsie nearly three years ago and never looked back. She does six hours a week, all the cleaning and ironing. We pay her pounds 3.80 an hour - that's nothing between three of us.'

He sees Elsie as a surrogate mother. 'When I was at home, my mum looked after me, I just never got into the habit. I suppose we could do it ourselves if we tried, but why?'

Jane, a 27-year-old Edinburgh recruitment consultant says: 'It's not that I'm lazy or incompetent. In fact I work really hard and just don't have the time to keep up with dusting behind things and scrubbing the kitchen bin. But please don't use my real name. My mother would have a fit. In her day, a cleaning lady was strictly if you had a 30-room mansion or if you'd finally hung up your Marigolds after 50 years respectably keeping your own home up. I live in a one- bed flat the size of a rabbit hutch and I've had a cleaner almost since I moved in.'

Others see it as a way of keeping the peace at home. 'I'm excessively tidy,' explains Diana Pepper, 31, who works in publishing syndication. 'Sharing flats leads to arguments about the domestic side of things. I'd rather pay pounds 10 a week to keep

down the angst. It's not filthy dirty work, it's just a duty that has to be done - and I certainly don't feel bad about it. It's a free-market economy.'

The term 'cleaning lady' is disliked by Pam Bader, of Molly Maid. 'We provide maids that come to do the light domestic service,' she explains. She is scathing about the image of the down-trodden char. 'Molly Maid is very female orientated and the last thing we would do is exploit our sex. All our maids are full-time, well-paid and enjoy it.' Molly Maids work in uniform and in pairs (Head Maid and Assistant Maid), and bring hi-tech equipment with them in their special Molly Maid car. They do not work by the hour, but do the whole house, however long it takes.

'We're professional people,' explains Mary Williams, a Head Maid. 'We have two weeks equipment training, how to use limescalers, de-greasers, different vacuum cleaners and such - and how to present ourselves to clients. We work from top to bottom, dusting, polishing, vacuuming, doing the windows and the kitchen - and behind the beds.' She says she does not flinch from any tasks.

The Molly Maid service is used by Debbie Fry, 31, a violinist with the Philharmonia Orchestra, who lives in south London. 'We both work irregular hours at a seven-day-a-week job and just haven't got the time to do the housework. It really got on topof me. I did feel a bit guilty at first because I couldn't cope - but not about paying someone else.' Her top-to-bottom time-unlimited house clean every three weeks costs pounds 37. 'They are marvellous - they even polish the wood furniture, which I never had time to do.'

It's not just the clientele that is different. Even among the un-uniformed cleaners it's hard to find a traditional Mrs Mop. Cathy Gibbons, 33, says: 'The old idea of the cleaning lady in turban, curlers, pinafore with a mop in her hand is wrong. Nowadays it's ladies with families who need a boost to their income.' She adds: 'All my customers are in their twenties and early thirties and they're very friendly - older people are more fussy and hang around you.'

However, not everyone finds young clients ideal. Carole, a cleaner for 30 years, says: 'There are a lot more young people now. I don't mind couples or girls sharing, but I decided a few years ago I wouldn't do young men. A lot of them live like pigs, act like they are still kids in the nursery and you are their nanny or servant. It's especially bad at this time of year - they get in the festive spirit and just get stupid. I thought I'd cleaned up my last sick when my own kids grew up.'

Is it wrong to wriggle out of tidying up after yourself? Claire Hulse, a secretary aged 23, shares a west London flat with four other people. 'We just need to get off our butts and clean up our own mess. Having a cleaner is just a complete lack of personal responsibility for one's surroundings.' Her objections are moral rather than financial. 'It's a reflection of the general unwillingness in society to take responsibility for your own actions. If you make a mess, you clean it up, and the same principles apply on a broader scale.'

Writer Marek Kohn, 35, believes in the positive benefit of doing your own dirty work. 'I ultimately have the nagging feeling that one should pick up one's own crap. I don't feel happy about the bourgeois re- creation of the servant class - servants have re-appeared in a form that doesn't make anyone uncomfortable. It's a global trend - nobody wants to do any unpleasant or mundane work. The fact that people are doing these jobs is part of the restructuring of the economy that makes me uncomfortable.I don't enjoy cleaning, but I love having done it. Taking life more slowly and getting down to scrub the floor once in a while should be part of the balance one strikes in one's life.'

But households that have become accustomed to a substitute mother, nanny, servant or friend may find they can't afford to do without one. Dr Bernard Harris, a social historian of Southampton University, says: 'It makes economic sense for professional women to work and contract out their household duties. In the early Eighties, a cleaning lady was an extravagance - if all you were doing was improving your standard of living. But with the mortgages and Nineties' commitments, many households need two incomes just to keep going.'

Daniel and his friends plan to hang on to Elsie for all they are worth. 'Without her, we'd be in squalor up to the armpits.' He is even offering special extra benefits. 'We're getting her a big box of chocs for Christmas,' he says.

(Photograph omitted)