I'm mulling over what changes I made to my life when I had kids and noticing that I'm much more comfortable with mess than I was when I first became a parent 4 years ago. Now I'm writing a book for working mothers my message as far as domesticity is to go for ‘good enough’ on the domestic front and bollocks to perfectionism.
Because perfectionism (I speak from experience – I am a woman who used to rewrite to-do lists if my son scribbled on them) is pointless, too much like hard work and annoying for everyone around us. I don’t know about you but I can turn into a demented fishwife when my husband puts his pants in my empty laundry basket or when the kids leave crumbs on my pristine kitchen work surfaces. Because let’s face it a perfect house doesn’t stay perfect for very long when you have small children.
I gave up striving to reach the bottom of the laundry basket a long time ago because the satisfaction doesn’t last long. Like Shirley Conran famously said, “Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom” I say if we’ve got time to watch the laundry basket we haven’t got enough going on in our lives! It’s staggering but true that academic research shows even where both parents work full time mothers still do more of every domestic task and men tend to over report the amount of each domestic activity they do!
I'm asking working mums to tell me about what they've ditched or do less of on the domestic front for my forthcoming book, Mothers Work. I'd love to hear from you - here's the survey.
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