Becoming Domestic

I had employed a cleaner for the last decade to come to my house twice a week for a total of 5 hours a week in order to vacuum, iron, scrub toilets, wash baths, floors, windows. I had never lifted a finger in my own home and had no idea how to.

After we moved away from London to downshift I read as many books as the local library stocked on home management and soon found out that little and often is the best approach with a general focus on one room or area per week (this works especially well if you can divide your house into approximately four zones so you are then back to the first zone each month).

Setting the timer for 15 minutes and doing some rather than nothing works really well for me as I could easily spend 15 minutes sitting on the sofa thinking ‘Grrrr I’ve got so much vacuuming to do it’s going to take me ages especially as I have to get the vacuum out, plug it in, blah blah blah’. The minute my brain thinks about vacuuming I now set the timer for 15 mins and get going. More often than not I have done LOADS by the time the beeper goes, feel great about my achievement and am back sitting with the kids before they have even noticed I’ve moved.

Since we downshifted to rural Worcestershire and I left work to be a fulltime mum I have started to manage the family’s weekly and monthly budget (before this move I just spent). If I saw something I liked I generally bought it. No wonder I ended up with a house full of stuff and no idea what things cost, how much essentials should cost or how much we could live on.

Until we moved at the beginning of July 2006 to live in the country and spendmuch more time with our kids I did not know the value of food, clothes, household goods, gifts etc.

The first step I took towards understanding where our money went was to carry a small chasbook with me and I now jot down every penny that is spent, what it is spent on and where. This then gives me valuable data as to what is essential spending and what could have been saved. It helped me to set weekly budgets for food, petrol, pharmacy items, kids clothing etc.

The cashbook is used at the end of the week and the data is collated into our familys financial spreadsheet as actual spendings against the predicted.

Suddenly it is Autumn and we are no longer able to dress the children in their summer clothes and thin pyjamas but where are their Autumn/Winter ones and how many still fit? Also how many clothes do I actually need for each child? I seem to have oodles thanks to the generosity of grandparents trawling charity shops for their little ones but too many stresses me out.

Presumably the answer lies in how often a family does a load of laundry (at least once a day for us) and how messy the kids are (puddles, mud pies, painting, mealtimes).

The trousers my kids wore yesterday are already washed, dried and folded. Tomorrow they will be put away so could actually get away with 2 pairs of trousers each, one extra pair for emergencies/spares.

Perhaps will pack away all but 4 or 5 tops and bottoms (skirts/dresses/trousers) for each of my children and see how I feel after a couple of weeks - less stressed due to having more room in drawers, less choise with what to wear or more hassled by the pressure to do a load of laundry?

We’ll see.