You can’t win ‘em all

A cliché that has never been more accurate than in these days of lockdown and new parenting…

Picture this (although not in too much detail): Sunday night, 10.30pm, baby asleep, husband winding down for bed, me: marigolds on, all clothes except underwear off, mop in one hand, bathroom cleaner and sponge in the other. It’s been well over a month since our wonderful long serving and long suffering cleaner came and one of us (me, god damn it!) is finally about to tackle our bathroom, having embarrassingly had to search the cupboard for the necessary equipment. The aforementioned length of time elapsed since the last clean is probably not a fact fit for the Internet, but there we go. I became (even more of) an over-sharer when I became a mum.

While others across the country have been using lockdown to focus on home improvements, our house has been steadily becoming an epic mess. Tom has been working 11 plus hour days from our spare room and I’m sort of managing to keep one little lady broadly entertained, fed and – crucially – quiet downstairs. Ruby’s going through her latest ‘developmental leap’ which I now know to mean ‘will cry over anything’. On top of the standard stuff, this now includes her fighting that glorious just-about-to-nod-off feeling (the one I had repeatedly throughout university lectures, then important work meetings and almost every day in recent memory since motherhood. The problem is that my sleep hinges on Ruby’s sleep, so actually I’m the one who should be crying…); and losing her mind if she’s not carried around the kitchen at a fast enough pace in her favourite ‘tiger in the tree’ hold. Little monkey in the tree more like it.

So, and may I stress that I say this knowing exactly how pathetic it sounds, I have no idea how anyone, ever, has gotten by with kids and without someone to help keep their house clean. Don’t even get me started on those gluttons for punishment with multiple children – my morale can’t take it. Because this, right here at number 10, is first world, middle class domestic mayhem at its best. I’ve told my mum, look I miss you very much, but not as much as I miss our cleaner.

So while our main woman is staying safe and, to be fair, taking a well deserved break (and still being paid as we believe she should be!), Tom and I are just about managing to keep the laundry churning. We’re one step away from celebrating the start of each load with a fist pump, so satisfied with ourselves for finding an opportunity to throw some similar coloured clothing into a machine with some chemicals and press go. We always forget to take the load out for at least 12 hours. Every. Single. Time.

There’s just not many moments with two hands free. Whether Ruby will take a substantial day time nap in her pram has therefore become a matter of central importance for the potential it will give us to tackle any one of the 5000 jobs in waiting, many of which involve unpacking from our move back in September. When she has napped, so overwhelmed are we by the sheer scale of the mountain we have to climb, we’ve instead sought solace in the latest episode of Masterchef.

So, clearly, neither of us have been inclined to roll up our sleeves, reach for the domestos and go to town on the bathroom. It just hasn’t been at the forefront of our minds, until we had to use the bathroom that is. Then we observed the situation with disgust before leaving said room and reverting to inaction, meanwhile a Mexican stand off developed over who would crack first. Unfortunately, Tom claimed bleach could be an aggravating factor to his post Covid chest (for those who don’t know Tom, he can be largely characterised by this keen ability to turn even the most sour lemons into lemonade) and so my Sunday night fate was sealed.

And upon finally cleaning the bloody bathroom, once we’d watched the Masterchef final of course, what I realised was this: it was – as someone wise had suggested it might be – actually quite satisfying. Cathartic, if you will. Was dirty; now clean. Magic. There was the downside of realising, upon seeing myself scantily clad in the floor to ceiling mirror that covers an entire wall of our bathroom (another currently very unwelcome legacy from the previous owners), that I had caught so much glorious Sunday sunshine on our walk that I looked like I was actually still wearing my clothes. Red and white I was, like the Boro home kit.

Anyway, I actually got into a bit of a groove with the cleaning. Every spare moment I’ve been taking a cloth to something, anything, everything, except my body that is. No time for that. But, in parenthood as in life, you canny win ‘em all.