Experts advise us to clean our bedding once or twice a week to avoid a grimy buildup of skin cells, sweat, and other debris.
But one woman horrified television viewers when she admitted that she never washed her bedding.
Cornelia Bayley, who made the revelation when she appeared in Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners in 2013, lives in a Grade II listed 17th century country house in Flintshire, North Wales.
She bought the 10-bedroom Jacobean manor house, which was built in 1610, for £70,000 in 1985. She devoted herself to preserving the historic house and moved there from London after breaking up with a man she described as the ‘love for [her] to live’.
At the time of her move, the property was a derelict shell, requiring her to spend tens of thousands of pounds to keep it standing.
Cornelia Bayley (pictured) appeared in Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners in 2013, where she revealed she had never washed her bedding
Since then, however, her money had dried up and she was forced to live on her small pension, which she supplemented by hosting psychic evenings at her home.
Since I lived in the mansion, the whole place had become more and more dingy, thanks to her only cleaning once or twice in all the time she lived there.
“200 years ago, 20 or 30 people would look after the house,” Cornelia said. “Now there’s just me and the cat.”
She admitted that she hadn’t bathed in two or three years, because the boiler was broken and she couldn’t afford hot water, but said, ‘In the 18th century, people didn’t bathe all the time, so I’m just living. in another era.’
However, the real horror, when it came to cleanliness or lack thereof, was found in the bedroom.
Speaking to the show’s hosts, Hayley and Dann, retired antiques dealer Cornelia talked about her bedding.
Not only had she never washed it, she admitted, but she believed her mattress was a whopping 100 years old.
Cleaning obsessives Hayley and Dann were shocked by the confession, as well as the general filth of Cornelia’s house Plas Tag.
She also revealed that her mattress – which had also never been cleaned – was probably about 100 years old
Hayley surveyed the bedroom and said, “Cornelia, when was the last time the bedding was washed?”
Cornelia replied, “Never.”
Hayley continued, ‘It’s never been washed? What about the mattress? Do you clean the mattresses?’
Dan added, “How old is the mattress?”
Cornelia said, ‘It could be 100 years old, or something like that. You know, that’s how people lived years ago – and that’s how I still live.’
Her desire to live as people did 100 years ago extended beyond her mattress, something that would prove troublesome for Hayley and Dann.
Cornelia told them to use only water and a sponge to clean the house – no modern cleaning products.
When Hayley warned that this would not kill the bacteria, Cornelia replied, “The bacteria can live here, I don’t care.”
In a 2020 YouTube video revisiting the episode, Hayley admitted that this limitation worried her.
The programme’s presenters, Hayley and Dann (pictured), appeared appalled by Cornelia’s revelations about her lack of cleaning
She said, “That was the first hurdle for me, and I immediately thought, This is going downhill very, very fast.
“Because in my mind I was thinking things like, ‘how am I going to get these toilets clean? What am I going to use to clean the sink drains and put the drains and stuff down?’.”
However, the cleaning work was carried out with water with a small amount of detergent.
While Cornelia seemed quite happy with the cleaning job, she admitted she had no intention of using the now spotless bath.
She still lives in Plas Teg, a private family home that is not open to the public. Updates on the home, which is undergoing structural repairs, can be found on Instagram.