I am a fundamentally lazy person.  I don’t know why this is but it’s always been the case.  It started when I was a child when I huffed because I didn’t want to clean the bathroom, do the drying up or clean out my rabbit, extended into senior school when I didn’t much feel like doing my homework or revising for my exams and continues to this day when I don’t want to do the hoovering, clean the bathroom or anything else that isn’t fun.  In short, and probably like most people, if it’s a chore it’s boring and I don’t want to do it.

That said, I think my main problem is that I lack discipline.  I am fully aware that if I spent an hour or 2 every morning doing various chores around the house it would always be pretty good and a lot less work in the long run.  My house is huge and really does require an element of discipline in order to keep on top of it.  So every so often I might put a little housework timetable together, couple it with a spreadsheet of what meals we’ll have on which days and feel utterly virtuous for the 2 days I follow it.  And then I’ll do something different like meet a friend for lunch or take my daughter swimming and the housework somehow falls by the wayside.  I don’t mean for it to happen but I’ll get up one morning and there will be a sea of tea cups, beer bottles (not mine) and dirty plates all over the house.  Now, it never takes long to sort it out but I do get that same huffy “I don’t WANT to do my homework” feeling about it.  At my age.

I’m lucky enough to have quite a few friends and they come and visit me regularly.  Somehow, though, just before they come I can always be found in a panic furiously cleaning, mopping the kitchen floor, scrubbing the bathroom, hoovering the stairs and whatever else I can think of because all of a sudden it all looks terrible.  How did that happen?  I only did all that 2 days ago and now it looks like I haven’t cleaned anything for 6 months!  And after they’ve arrived I will notice dust on the skirting boards.  What must they think of me?!  I can’t help it if I just don’t think to do things like that.  But I will make a mental note to add that to the chores list.  And I’ll put it down for Mondays too so at least it’ll get done during the virtuous phase of days 1 and 2 of timetable following.

The hardest thing for me is that all this just doesn’t come naturally when for other people it seems to.  There are people in the world who you know for certain will have spotless houses if you dropped in on them unannounced at any time.  I want that!  I’m so jealous!  I really have to work at it and usually fail quite spectacularly.  So if you turn up at chez Flaherty any time soon and I’m not following the housework timetable let me apologise in advance for the stairs not having been hoovered and the dust on the skirting boards.  I didn’t notice that it needed doing until you got here.