SUPERMARKET shelves are full of boxes of wipes in their re-sealable pouches. Wipes for walls, windows, floors, loos, baths, kitchens. Use once and throw away.

No rinsing, washing and storing up of germs. Goodbye cloth and can of cleaner. And what on earth was elbow grease? This is streamlined housework. They seem so easy. We loved the idea of wiping one of those nice sparkly swathes through the grime and offered up our home as the ideal testing ground. Were we impressed?

No.

Cleaning wipes sort of work but they offer nothing extra that can't be gained from more traditional methods - except for extra expense. Wipes are:

Expensive. For the price of a pack of wipes you can get a whole bottle of cleaner which will last a lot longer and do a lot more.

Fiddly. Even the big wipes aren't that big and it's easy to find yourself using a couple at a time, making them even more expensive. Not all the packs sealed properly every time, so remaining wipes could soon dry out.

Largely ineffectual. As far as removing stains went, they seemed not much more effective than any damp cloth.

No quicker or easier than a cloth and a bottle of spray.

Pointless. All that packaging, for what?

The only advantage they have is that when you're wiping surfaces, especially in the kitchen and bathroom, you don't have a cloth hanging round full of germs. Dishcloths are notorious germ traps. And as for the cloths you use in the bathroom... But if that's your problem, use disposable cloths and spray cleaner - it would be cheaper and more effective.

WIPES WE LIKE

Limelite Limescale Remover Wipes £1.89

Hard water and soap is a nasty combination, building up a scummy film of limescale. We tried these on our shower screen and got very good results, very easily. Far more effective than any of the other shower cleaners we had tried.

Parozone Toilet Wipes £1.14

Quick and easy to wipe the loo - and you can flush them away afterwards, which makes life a lot simpler.

WIPES WORTH TRYING

Basically any of the anti-bacterial wipes. They are handy to keep for a quick wipe of kitchen work surfaces, or for the loo, or the floor round the loo, simply because you can throw them - and the germs - away. Unfortunately, you can't flush these down the loo, so they are not as convenient as others. And although they might be good at getting rid of bugs, they were hopeless at removing stains or spills.

If you really want to improve hygiene in your home, the answer, according to experts, is to wash you hands a lot more often - after using the loo, blowing your nose, petting the dog, before preparing food and in between dealing with raw and cooked meat. You might think you wash your hands enough but you probably don't.

Bugs Away anti-bacterial wipes £1.98 for 40.

Dettol extra strong floor wipes £2.47 for 15

Flash anti-bacterial wipes £1.48 for 60

All these claim to kill 99.9 per cent of bacteria

Tesco anti-bacterial floor wipes 98p for 15

Sainsbury's anti-bacterial wipes £1.48 for 40

WIPES THAT LEFT US WONDERING WHY?

Cif Oxy Wipes £1.48 for 60

Nowhere near as effective as Cif spray.

Dettol multi-action wipes £1.78 for 48

Nice smell, Hopeless on wiping cooker. Might have killed germs, but didn't begin to shift boiled-over rice.

Mr Muscle Orange Oil floor wipes £1.85 for 12

Nice smell, not particularly good at cleaning.

Mr Sheen Wipes £1.97

Smelt sickly and worked no better than a damp cloth.

Windolene wipes £1.78

"Streak free!" it says in large letters "Leaves a sparkling shine". No they didn't. And as we had to wipe them over with a clean cloth afterwards, where was their advantage?

Duck Magic Scrubs £2.98

Pointless, utterly pointless. There's a handle, a plastic box, and a pack of spongy wipes. You fit the wipe to the handle and scrub away. If you happen to have an enormous stretch of wall to do, then fine. But most bathrooms have taps and edges, and corners - none of which this thing will do. You have to take the pad off its clever handle. So what's the point? Also, they don't even clean very well.

VERDICT

Just because something is new and clever, doesn't actually mean that it's any improvement on what went before.