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Is She REALLY a Domestic Goddess?!

By Mum's the Word on April 26, 2013 in Humour

Everyone has at least one friend or relative who makes them feel like utter rubbish when it comes to matters of the home. You know the type, they usually have a gaggle of children all of whom are studious AND sporty, perfectly coiffured hair, a Cath Kidston tablecloth on her scrubbed wooden table, which sits in the ‘heart of the home’ kitchen with the Aga and Le Creuset casserole dishes. She has a job but also manages to volunteer in a charity shop and chair the PTA at her kids’ school. She’s provides her family with gourmet, highly nutritious meals every night of the week and still manages to keep her home looking like it’s straight out of the pages of Country Living. Oh, and I bet the bitch makes all of her own dresses too. And she’s amazing in bed.

Well, I’ve got 5 surefire tests which will help you discover if this paragon of domestic virtue is really all she seems. The Domestic Goddess test, if you will.

1. Check her Plugs

Does she have those automatic plugs in any of her sinks, the ones where you pull a lever or twist a dial to get them to pop up and down? She does? Right…pull it all the way out. There’s a plastic cage around the bottom to stop large items from going down the sink. If this woman is a Housework Charlatan, her plug cages will be clogged with hair and soap. They may have even gone brown or black with the soap residue.

2. Open the Washing Machine Drawer

Pull her washing machine drawer open. Just like the plug cages, washing machine drawers can go reallllly black and gunky if you don’t rinse out the washing powder and fabric softener residue. Any self-respecting Domestic Goddess will know this, so if your mate has gunky drawers *ahem*, you know it’s all a front.

3. The Dust Test

Okay, so even a homemaking halfwit knows that dust is a dead giveaway when it comes to giving an impression of cleanliness. Most people, however, if they are a total bodger, will only bother with eye-level. You want to get up HIGH, do they have an 8-foot bookcase? Get your hand up there and run it along. I bet it’s dustier than a bricklayers back pocket.

4. Lift The Couch Cushions

Let’s face it, this woman probably has antique Chesterfields or something, but if she has a sofa with detachable cushions, lift up the seat pads and take a peek underneath. There could be a multitude of sins hiding under there and only a real domestic goddess would have remembered to vacuum in the nooks and crannies.

5. Turn on the Shower

Limescale. It’s a son of a bitch. We’ve all seen the Barry Scott magic where you spray Cilit Bang on your showerhead and the jets start miraculously coming our straight again, but have you ever actually bothered to do it? Maybe your pal hasn’t either. Turn on her shower. If it sprays you in the face at a 90° angle, she’s limescaled up the wazoo and probably a pretender to the Queen of Clean throne.

So, there you have it. Five surefire ways to make you feel better and to effectively derelict the reputation of your “Wishes She was Nigella/Kim/Aggie rolled into one” pal.

**Disclaimer: There’s a very good chance that if you go around someone else’s home turning their shower on, lifting the couch cushions or scaling their bookcase, you may not remain friends with the for very long. And if you do need to go to these lengths to make yourself feel better, maybe a good look inwards is what you need.

You’re a dirty bitch. Deal with it.

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Another Housework Post…

By Mum's the Word on October 19, 2012 in Personal, Rant, Sponsored Posts

Now that Sausage is at school, I have a lot more time on my hands. I have some work to do here and there, but largely I’m a free agent. You’d think this would be a good thing, but it’s not. Here’s why:

1. Instead of taking care of another person, I’m doing a lot of sitting on my bum and eating crisps. It’ not good for my sanity or my waistline.

2. Daytime TV is truly, truly rubbish, but I can feel myself getting sucked in. I got all antsy today because I didn’t get to watch Jeremy Kyle.

3. Before, when the house was a dump, I had an excuse. “I’ve been running around after a 4 year old!” I’d cry. Now, it’s just me, wallowing in my own filth, which is so not a good look.

There’s definitely an element of me being a lazy cow in there (obvs…) but I also blame my house. No, honestly, hear me out.

I have the smallest kitchen in the whole world. This means I have no space for a dishwasher, so dishes build up on the side and to compound this the ‘side’ is bloody tiny, so the kitchen looks condemnable after just one meal. I have a decent enough washing machine, but it’s LOUD and as our kitchen is basically just a sectioned off part of our living room, this is by no means convenient. Also, there’s no space for a dryer, so washing is an ordeal. I can only stick a load on when I can get it hung out, and living in England means that this is for about three and half weeks of the year. The rest of the time, it’s on clothes horses or sitting in piles which eventually smell like mould.

I’d absolutely adore one of these Bosch Washing Mashines from Appliances direct, which would be quieter, more efficient and look a damn-sight nicer too. I’d need an extension (or a new house…) before I got all of my other wishes, but this would be a start. ‘Cause let’s face it, there’s nothing worse that sitting down to watch Jeremy Kyle and not being able to hear it over the noisy washing machine!

A girl can dream, can’t she…?!

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Making Family Chores Fun

By Mum's the Word on March 27, 2012 in Parenting, Personal, Photos

I may have mentioned once or twice (ahem…) that I’m pretty rubbish at housework. In fact, I’ve found no less than four posts on this very blog, with confessions of slovenliness (here…here…here…and here, just in case you’re interested!). However, since I went back to work, I’ve really stepped up on the housework front. I may still have dusty skirting boards and my mother-in-law may have done my washing up for me about half a dozen times in the last few months, but I have been keeping up with the rest of it!

However, the problem with working and maintaining a decent home is that I still have to find time in the middle of all of that to spend time with Sausage. Fortunately, she’s at that age where she loves to help so I’ve started drafting her in to help with simple tasks, which means that we get to spend time together whilst being productive as well as making the whole thing a lot more pleasant for me.

Here are a few examples of how Sausage has been getting involved:

Sausage loves to help me hang the washing on the line. We make up simple games like getting her to shout out who each item belongs to as I hang it, which is simple but it gets her to use her brain while doing a mundane task.

She’ll often help by passing me the pegs or the wet clothes, or sometimes just keeps me smiling by wrapping herself in the sheets and shouting “COME AND FIND MEEEE!”.

Making the beds is a really simple task that Sausage can more or less do by herself, but we have fun doing it together. We flap the duvet around and generally clown about. I’ve come to the conclusion that chores needn’t be done promptly if you’re having fun. The beds will look better in the end and you’ll have enjoyed yourself in the process. Look at Sausage admiring her work in the last picture, pure pride!

As I mentioned before, now I’m back at work I have to be more efficient and Husband helped by devising a system to help us get the laundry away. Before, I’d do the washing, it’d get brought in and dumped in a corner where it would stay until each item got reworn. Now, we have three baskets in different

colours, one for each of us, and the washing gets sorted into the baskets. This makes it a lot easier to put away in the respective wardrobe and this sorting has more or less been taken over by Sausage who loves working out whose item is whose and which basket it needs to go into.

I HATE WASHING UP. Seriously hate it. So does Husband, which is why between us we end up with a backlog of dishes that need doing and a total of ZERO enthusiasm for doing it. That was, until my little helper got involved! Now, I wash, Sausage stands on her chair and put the clean dishes on the draining board. A minor thing, but it gives us a chance to have a chat, sing, listen to music and spend what has turned out to be some really nice time together.

So, that’s how the Mum’s the Word family make their chores a bit more fun! This post is part of the Morphy Richards Innovator linky over on Tots 100.