I’m not sure how it happened. One minute I was keeping my surname, planning a career, ready to take on the world the next I was living in the suburbs with two little aliens (some people would call them children, they would be wrong).

The irony of my becoming a housewife induced side-splitting laughter amongst my friends. Me, the woman who served dinner guests meals so bad we had to move the party to the local Mexican restaurant, the woman who had been known to purchase new underwear because she couldn’t  keep up with the washing, in fact the washing was piled high next to the bed, a tablecloth thrown over it and a lamp sat atop in a frenzy of “tidying” when visitors where coming to stay.

I’m not the person you would put in charge of running a household and certainly not the one to be given responsibility for domestic duties.

Yet somehow that’s where I found myself for ten LONG years.

You would think being home all day one would have a spotless house. Not so. The more time I had at home the more mess I was able to make.

It came as a great shock to me to find myself in charge of cleaning, cooking, washing, scrubbing and ironing (although to be honest I gave up on the ironing quite early in the piece – really what is the POINT of ironing?). I had always imagined when I was grown up I would have a cleaner. To find that was not financially viable came as a great shock to me.

So instead I muddled on through and came up with my own guidelines for domesticity.

Noodle casserole is a gourmet delight. It’s noodles, can of tomatoes, a squirt of tomato paste, a few dried herbs and any leftovers you have in the fridge, sausages, bbq chicken, carrots, zucchini chuck it in, cover it with cheese. Make a big enough batch you can feed a family for a week. They don’t necessarily enjoy it for a week but hey children need to learn that  life isn’t always enjoyable.

If you don’t disturb the dust it won’t bother you.

An obstacle course of magazines, toys, shoes and books strewn across the floor is a development aid for babies learning to walk. Seriously, if they can make their way through this maze without stumbling and killing themselves they will grow up with gross motor skills far beyond their peers.

It’s not mould – it’s an immunity building technique – my children can travel the world without fear of catching anything – they’ve already been exposed to it all in the kitchen at home.

Children learn teamwork from taking part in frenzied clean up sprees when friends ring and say they are dropping by.

Do a little bit each day – just five minutes devoted to pick up, wipe, put away – it won’t actually make the house look any better because each day four people will spend two hours dropping, spilling and pulling out – but you feel like you at least made an effort.

It’s just a question of mindset. That’s what important.

(In a bid to improve our domestic abilities I’m taking part in the Kids Are All Right / Viva Share the Cleaning Challenge)