I have been neglecting my duties as a wife. 

Not just in the bedroom, (that’s a whole different story) also in the kitchen and the bathroom – in fact all over the house.  Where I once aspired to being a Domestic Goddess, and cleaned like Kim and Aggie, I am now more of a Desperate Housewife.

I blame my mother.  I blame her for lots of things.  My obsession with makeup, interest in diet and fitness, love of fine things, but most of all I blame her for my desire for clean.  The woman who cleans her house every day, that’s all her house, not just the bit they’ve used, is also the woman who irons knickers, socks and tea towels.  We learn our traits from our mothers and mine passed on a mild phobia of all things dirty.

The problem with house work is it’s like painting the Severn Bridge; as soon as you finish you have to start all over again.  I’ve taken to putting a sign ‘Clean do not use’ on the cloakroom door before guests arrive.  It doesn’t matter how many toilets are in a house, it’s the clean one waiting for guests that they have to use.
   
One task I won’t have to do this year is decorate for Halloween, the spiders have moved in and the cobwebs are already up.  This reminds me of an old joke.  ‘How do you know when your wife is dead?’ ‘When the sex stays the same and ironing piles up.’  I used to laugh at this – is the laugh  now on me?

Making the decision between doing the housework and writing about a lovely new skincare product, is like choosing, daddy or chips?  Not much choice in my case, unless I could type while eating chips – now you’re talking.

So as the dust lingers, the website gleams, polishing up an article is so much more satisfying than polishing up the house that I have been cleaning for 24 years.  You would think by now I would have caught up, but have I hell.  My ambition to have the entire house clean at the beginning of each week is still that – an ambition.  So far it’s unfulfilled, my motto of everything gets done in the end is being used all too frequently.

After 26 years of washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning, I’m hanging up my Marigolds, tossing aside my tea towel and metaphorically sweeping the housework under the carpet. 

The trouble with housework is, you do it, and 6 months later it needs doing again!