Dirty protest backfires badly on me

4:27pm Thursday 3rd April 2008

AMONG the many, many things my children hate about me (my insistence on talking to their friends, my daily reminders about teeth brushing-), my fixation with keeping the house clean and tidy has to be up there at the top.

Born to a clean and tidy mother, I grew up with the sound of the vacuum cleaner roaring in my ears and a duster attached to each foot.

No surprise then, that I have become the kind of woman who can't relax unless the floors have been mopped, the curtain poles are polished, the tassles of the rug are all facing the same way and the TV remotes are lined up, 1cm apart and perfectly square, on the coffee table.

A (former) friend once bought me a fridge magnet that read "Boring women have spotless homes", but I never put it up.

Fridge magnets are clutter my kitchen can do without. And besides, I was too busy ironing tea towels to be bothered.

My tidy streak has never been a problem for me but it is the bane of my husband and children's lives. They don't like it when I follow them around with the dustpan and brush to catch their crumbs, or when I change the bed sheets. Okay, so they are still wrapped up in them at the time, but if a job needs doing you might as well get on with it, I say.

Consequently, I spend my time nagging them to be tidy and they nag me to stop nagging. So last week I did. Stop nagging, I mean. In fact I stopped, full stop. Mum went on strike.

I'd like to say I understood there's more to life than a tidy home, but the truth is far less dramatic.

After scrubbing and cleaning the house until it shone I'd popped out for a couple of hours, leaving Dad in charge. When I returned, the house looked a mess.

I decided to teach them a lesson. I would stop carrying out all those chores that make their lives easier and see how they liked it.

So, no more picking up clothes from the bedroom floor, no more washing mouldy banana from lunchboxes, no more cleaning the toilet seat every day (well, perhaps just once - I do live in a house of men, after all).

It was a brilliant plan - a silent protest that would creep up on them with devastating consequences.

As the week went on they would realise there was no clean PE kit if the kit bag wasn't emptied, no mugs for their coffee unless they emptied the dishwasher.

Finally, they would see that a messy home does create a messy life.

And it would have worked, if those pesky kids had even noticed what I was doing.

Four days later and I was driven crazy by the mountain of shoes in the hallway and the carpet of crumbs on the stairs.

"Has anyone noticed that the house is messier than normal?" I asked one morning.

"Yeah, and it's great you've been so chilled about it, mum, " said my eldest son.

"You should be like that more often."

I give up.

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