By MARTIN NEWLAND

Last updated at 10:38 21 February 2007

Forget the multi-tasking Domestic Goddess. New research proves what most men have suspected for years - women are messier than men

Here is a useful exercise for men who find themselves accused by their partners of being disorganised slobs — or for those generally sick of the stereotype that men are untidy and women are fastidious little angels.

Grab the nearest handbag — it might belong to your wife or to a friend at the office — dump the contents on a desk and ask them to convince you that all their stuff is necessary to get through the day.

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My wife's bag, for instance, contains the following: three packets of tissues; two packets of chewing gum; two sheets of Nurofen liquid capsules and two packets of antiseptic wipes; one (empty) glasses case; one monkey finger puppet; a tube of lip salve; mobile phone; Clinique foundation makeup; four used tickets to the Paris metro and four receipts; a piece of paper with the code to her debit card written on it; a button, a pen and four hairclips; a wallet the size of a brick containing euros, Sterling, four credit cards and a Lego loyalty card; a receipt for some shoes and a Euro Millions lottery ticket; car keys; and some drawings, executed in crayon, by our youngest.

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And this, she admitted to me, was after she had cleared her bag out.

And now for my wallet: driver's licence, credit card and £65 in cash.

Now let's move on to our cars. My wife gains no exemptions here because she has to drive the children around more. I work from home and ferry them around, too.

Her car is, basically, a skip. I once removed nine empty bottles of water from it. The clothes for the local charity shop are still in the boot, three weeks after I put them there. There are crumbs everywhere, month-old sandwich crusts, hundreds of pieces of chewed gum wrapped in paper (chucking it out of the window would harm the environment, apparently), shoes, DVDs and empty crisp packets.

My car, for its part, contains a few CDs and nothing else.

Research from the University of Arizona, released last week, revealed that women's desks are dirtier than men's because they are more cluttered — with handbags, cosmetics, lotions, mobile phones and food.

And the research goes on to say that women have up to four times as many germs in, on and around their desks, personal items, computers and phones than men have.

The findings throw doubt on the universally held belief that women care more about cleanliness than men.

They make one wonder about the accuracy of surveys which present women as living in a permanent state of guilt about the messiness of the home.

And about the notion, commonly held, that men are less concerned about grime and thus capable of sitting on the sofa watching television while 'the little woman' scurries about in her pinny, frantically dusting.

I, for one, have always believed that women generate more clutter and as the Arizona study points out, where there is clutter there is dirt. Has anyone noticed women's magpie-like obsession with pictures and memorabilia in the workplace, for instance?

It is as though a little something from every chapter of their lives has to find its way onto their desk, from pictures of every member of their extended family to a coaster from that lovely little bistro on the Champs Elysees. Then there's the cute and cuddly toy animals gathered around, or even suspended from, the angle poise lamp.

The female desk also draws its clutter from a woman's capacity for emergency planning. Racks of clothes are to be found nearby, for that unforeseen evening event or accident with the gravy in the canteen. Drawers are crammed with spare tights, medical equipment, shoe polish, diet aids, hair curlers, back massagers and gym clothes.

There used to be a programme on American television called MacGyver, in which the hero was capable of using everyday objects to make gadgets to get him out of trouble. I reckon MacGyver would be able to fashion a small thermonuclear device from the contents of the average female's desk drawers.

Just because the man tends to sometimes leave the seat up does not mean he is the house slob. Just because, after a hard day and a little too much to drink, he sometimes goes to bed leaving his clothes strewn on the floor does not place him beyond the pale.

These are random transgressions that are easily matched or even surpassed by the general chaos of a woman's life.

My sister-in-law, Pascale, is an unbelievably good cook. But she is capable of turning the kitchen into a battle scene from the Somme. It is as though the task at hand is not so much to feed people as to use absolutely every bit of crockery, every utensil right down to the last potato-peeler and garlic press, in the process.

When at the family place in France, where sometimes as many as 25 people are seated for dinner, I find myself praying that she will not call for a cheese course — because this means 25 more plates to clean.

How is it possible to use three separate colanders preparing one meal, or two cheese graters? I once, in a fit of washer-upper's pique, counted the number of wooden spoons she had used — ten. You could build a sizeable doll's house with ten wooden spoons.

At the end of one of Pascale's meals, the kitchen is not just messy. It looks like Beirut in the bad old days. It looks like it has been strafed by an F16 fighter plane.

A ND WALK into any family bathroom and inventory the products. Man has razor, shaving foam, deodorant and toothbrush. Woman has every conceivable unguent, cosmetic, conditioner and shampoo, usually sealed to the bathroom surface by spillage.

There are hundreds of cotton buds, and boxes and boxes of pointy things and brushy things that would look more at home on Torquemada's torture rack than in a bathroom.

There are clothes draped over everything, slippers abandoned at the door, bathrobes hanging on towel rails and towels hanging over the banisters.

There are five blouses lying on the bed because it is impossible for a woman to simply choose a single item to wear before going out. They have to stage a mini fashion show, trying on combinations of clothes and asking the husband, at each combination, how she looks (as if he would ever, ever say anything other than 'wonderful').

A new school means my 16-year-old daughter has recently come home to live with us. She is like a tornado, capable of generating more mess than the three boys combined. Every corner contains a discarded pair of her Converse shoes.

She always seems to be washing her hair, which is fine by me except that she then walks around the house unwinding wet towels from her head and draping them over the nearest upright object.

Much is made of a woman's ability to multi-task. Women, unlike men, the theory goes, can do several things at a time. But doing several things at a time is only of use if those things are actually completed.

Otherwise the house is transformed into a series of half-finished 'projects', with airing cupboards unpacked, socks paired and sorted but not put away, and recycling abandoned halfway down the garden path.

But traditional roles in the home have become confused. Lovely Gordon's taxation policies, which force every household member capable of earning a wage to find work, mean that the natural rhythms of family life are disturbed.

Both parents have only a couple of hours in the evening to reacquaint themselves with the children, put them to bed, tidy up, cook (or heat up a ready made meal) and talk to each other.

I have friends who describe how depressed they are at coming home to find the detritus of the morning — breakfast utensils and hastily discarded pyjamas — still scattered around the house. They describe the return from work as a 'housecoming' rather than a 'homecoming'.

In these situations there is no space for traditional role models. Both sexes pitch in with dealing with the basics and leave the actual cleaning, where finances allow, to a cleaner.

WHEN I recently found myself unemployed, we dispensed with our au pair, a fantastically efficient robot who had the whole house sparkling by 10am.

Thrown together without help, I have to report that despite my comments about women and cleanliness, it was my wife who kept the house clean, while I kept it ordered.

I would deal with the drifts of laundry while she would make sure the loos did not turn into major biohazards. I would lift the sofa up while she vacuumed underneath, and so on.

I have to add also that she does the family finances. If she was to leave tomorrow I would not know how to access my own internet bank account.

But none of this leaves her any the less inclined towards messiness and personal chaos. I was discussing this piece with my wife and mother-in-law a couple of days ago.

'Why do you need to carry so much stuff around with you?' I asked, citing the three packets of tissues I had found in her handbag.

'Because I have to think about the children, all of whom have runny noses,' she answered. 'Women need more stuff than men and you would just tell them to use their sleeves.'

Fair enough, I suppose.

But mere contingency planning still does not account for the sheer amount of stuff a woman owns.

When I worked in an office, there were some women whose outfits and accessories — from shoes to skirts to blouses to bracelets to shades — never seemed to make a second appearance in any given week.

It is perfectly normal on the other hand to see a man wearing the same suit two or three times a week.

Even the most organised woman cannot possibly lead an orderly life while at the same time displaying, in the words of Shakespeare, her 'infinite variety'.

There simply is not enough storage space in the workplace, in her handbag or at home.