Cinderella

I never did the nesting thing with the other two. As someone who is at best ambivalent about housework, I was waiting for this apparentl maternal rush of hormones that would turn me into a housecleaning freak. I envisaged sparkling bench tops and scrubbing grout with toothbrushes.

And envisaging was about as close as I got.

I hate mess and I hate dirt, but I've not, at least since moving in with Bingley and having children, been anal about it. I can live with "piles" of stuff and I adore clutter. I hate crunchy or sticky sensations under foot but I can easily turn a blind eye to the potatoes that are growing their own colony in the basket and the strange unidentifiable grime on the bottom of the fridge.

Well at least I could.

Now that I have a zillion things to do every day I have somehow turned on the part of my brain that insists that everything be tidy all the time. It's as though the anxiety about everything else can be held at bay so long as the carpet is vacuumed and the dishwasher on. Today I was incensed when I turned on the light in the kitchen to see how dirty the tiles were. And like a mad woman I got down on hands and knees with a scourer and Handy Andy and hot water and scrubbed away at each individual tile until my fingernails peeled and broke.

Then surveyed the scene and realised most of the dirt was actually chips in the tiles that won't come out. Never ever buy cheap laminate tiles...

This made me grimly more determined to clean the rest of the house, which I did, to the smell of cooking banana bread wafting throughout. And that enthusiasm continued right up until the point that I overdid it and started vomiting.

BUT I now have a clean(ish) house and all is right with the world.