Kiwi households spend an astounding 16,810 hours cleaning with Home Heroes challenge

Over a six-week period 1,161 Kiwi families clocked up an astounding 16,810 hours of cleaning, the equivalent of just over 700 days or 23 months, as part of the first ever Home Heroes online challenge.

Home Heroes, an online game conducted by Reckitt Benckiser, makers of Dettol, Finish, Harpic, Vanish and BAM, helps transform cleaning from a daily chore into a fun competition for the whole family. Families battled it out against each other by completing a number of cleaning challenges in a quest to become the top cleaner in their household.

In a survey* conducted prior to the challenge, more than 57 per cent of parents were desperate to enlist help when it came to the household chores and 26 per cent believed their children were the main hindrance when it came to getting the cleaning done.

The Home Heroes game aimed to deal with this issue by encouraging kids to carry out household chores by giving them points and prizes when they completed their set tasks. An online leader board allowed players to measure their results and progress against other members of the family, friends and neighbours.

“Home Heroes has been a huge success in its first year and the feedback we’ve received from families across the country so far has been fantastic,” says Reckitt Benckiser New Zealand Marketing Director, Joerg Stockburger.

“The programme has definitely appealed to the competitive nature of Kiwis, and particularly that of the family unit, where bragging rights are a strong motivation. Many participants found that the kids were too busy trying to collect points to even realise they were helping with the chores,” he adds.

Rachel Goodchild, a leading parenting and education coach, enjoyed putting her own children to the Home Heroes test. "I’m a big believer in getting children to work around the house, in part to keep me sane as a working mother but also because I'm all about raising children into adults who can look after themselves. Every dish washed and every table wiped is one step closer to them becoming an adult I know will cope well when they leave home. The best thing of all is it also helps us as a family to see cleaning is a shared responsibility,” she says.

Tasks cited by participants as the most popular included carpet cleaning and cleaning the cat and dog bowl. Surprisingly cleaning the bathroom also came out as one of the more popular tasks, although cleaning the toilet was among the least favourite.

“We recognise that cleaning is considered a burden in many households and most would prefer to be spending time on something else. This programme reinforces the notion of ‘many hands make light work’ to encourage the sharing of chores amongst all family members, in order to give parents back more time for the important things in life,” adds Stockburger.

Reckitt Benckiser hopes that Home Heroes has helped to create more long-term positive habits when it comes to distributing chores fairly amongst members of the household and we encourage families to keep up the good work.

To sign up or find out more visit www.home-heroes.co.nz

Editor’s Note: Nationwide survey* conducted by e-Lounge with a base of 1,836 respondents.