The mounds of Christmas shopping, cleaning, grocery shopping, present-wrap- ping, cooking and tidying that many of you labour over during the festive period, will probably leave you exhausted.

But to make sure the stress doesn't continue into the New Year, we have come up with some vital gadgets and machines to ease your workload at home and make your life much more relaxed.

A new survey has revealed that 27 million people in England could be suffering from the effects of Zeigarnik Stress, caused by undertaking domestic tasks.

The survey found that the most disagreeable tasks caused the greatest irritation, frustration and anxiety. Cleaning greasy pans was the worst perpetrator, followed closely by cleaning the windows and washing the car. Men are more likely to be depressed when confronting a long list of domestic chores than women, who are more likely to panic, and one in three people claim to be depressed about doing domestic chores, especially those over the age of 26.

But leaving tasks uncompleted is most likely to bring people out in a cold sweat.

Dr David Lewis, psychologist and author of Ten Minute Time And Stress Management, who analysed the survey's findings, says: "As we enter the 21st century the pressures of everyday living and juggling family life with increased stresses at work, are compounded by the need to do mundane domestic chores.

Even simple tasks like washing-up, cleaning the windows or washing the car can become an inordinate strain if they pile up and don't get done. "It is clear from the findings of this report that for well over half the population, being unable to complete routine household tasks represents a major source of domestic stress."

And if you do get around to carrying out a task, being interrupted half-way through causes almost as much anxiety as actually carrying out the task in the first place.

The phone is the worst culprit for 62 per cent of us. So instead of going round the twist, how about investing in an automatic answer-machine if you don't want to be disturbed.

Then you can phone people back at your leisure.

The BT2015 Quartet Cordless Telephone with Answering Machine costs £89.95 and means that when you do want to phone someone back, you can get away from the chaos, and the rest of your family, and chat in private. Anyone who starts quaking at the thought of cleaning the carpets, curtains and any other household surface, could invest in a steam cleaner, which does all the tasks for you.

The Polti Vaporetto 1500, featured here, costs £349.95 and is an ideal way of cleaning the house from top-to-toe without the hassle.

Investing in a highly efficient dish- washer is a must. The new Whirlpool ADP 970WH at £269.95 will leave you time to relax and watch TV while it does all the hard work for you, including dirty pots and pans.

It has enough space for 12 place settings, so will cater for the biggest dinner party. If you fancy being even more lazy why don't you employ a cleaner a few hours a week, or once a month - Maids in Oxford charges £40 for three hours. For those of you who just can't face washing and cleaning the car and find that a car wash just doesn't do the job, why not enrol Autoprep, a mobile valeting service, which charges £55 for three hours.

And a window cleaner is cheaper than you might think and well worth the money.

Mark Lewis, who works in and around Oxford, charges about £10 to clean the windows of a three bedroom house.

Story date: Friday 24 December

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.