Mondays

I have said before I am no domestic goddess.  I don't don an apron and go round the house with a duster in my hand all day, everyday.  Mondays and Tuesdays are what I call 'chore days'.  These are the days I don't work and after the weekend which leaves the house pretty much in a mess because the whole family has spent more time at home, I will do a big tidy/clean-up.  That is if I don't give myself a day off and go out or I have to cover for a colleague.  In fact I had to this week but my colleague was feeling better and could work.





Surfaces will be wiped and floor hoovered.  Toilets washed and I strive to fold and put away the laundry I'd done and try very hard to ignore the mountain of clothes calling out to me to be ironed.  Ironing is my pet peeve.  I'm really terrible with it!  A can vouch for it.  I will procrastinate and procrastinate until I can no longer stand the sight of the basket of clothes.  Then I will reluctantly put the ironing board in front of the telly and get on with the ultra boring chore.  I'm not one who enjoys seeing the creases being ironed out.





Come 3.15pm before the school run, I'll be as pleased as can be.  No cushions or throw on the floor.  No lego bricks or toys littered around.  No coloured pencils and paper lying here and there.  No crumbs on the carpet.  No stray socks in the bedroom.





A home which is spick and span, albeit just for a while before the girls come back.  Everytime we get back from school and step into the house, I will tell them I'd just tidied up the whole place and plead them to co-operate and not to mess up.  Most times they will comply, for the rest of the day.






Of course my home doesn't look like this every single day. I will use the portable hoover (it's in the picture above) for spot cleaning everyday and pick things up from the floor at the end of each day but as the week progresses, my willpower to do that will be like my energy level.  It depletes everyday. So come weekend (unless we have guests), the house will be far from what it looks like in the pictures here.  A doesn't understand why I have to tidy up before guests arrive.  He thinks I'm putting on a front.  I don't know many people who will not do that when they're expecting visitors.  It's only polite to welcome people into a tidy home, not a messy one even if it doesn't look like that everyday.  But we've improved a lot I must say.  Unlike the house we used to live in in Surrey when the girls were much younger and there were more toys, it's not that bad now.





Here's my little effort to create some Chinese New Year atmosphere in the house.