Collaborative hoovering

I’d like to think I’m not the only person out there who’s house cleaning standards dropped somewhat with the advent of children. Not to say that my home was ever a Mecca of dazzling surfaces and rarely was furniture ever moved – even in spring. Nowadays though, the entire fiasco generally consists of an hour and a half flying around the house with a cloth and a hoover once a week on a Tuesday afternoon. Occasionally a dustpan gets involved.

Last week however, my annual leave petered out at work with three whole weeks left to go. Drastic action had to be taken in order to fulfil my lacklustre yet obsessive need to maintain my own half-arsed standards. Yes, that’s right, I enlisted the assistance of the boy.

As an incentive (!) to miss out on a post pre-school play date I informed him that there was a little friend called Henry at home waiting to play with him. Intrigued, he went along with my charade.

Back home Henry appeared in all his red and black glory from the cupboard under the stairs. JJ examined him from all angles before demanding an explanation. Apparently he was expecting a red Henry. Henry is only half red. This is the kind of obsessive compulsive behaviour you come to expect from a pre-schooler.

After some persuasion I managed to convince him that this would be fun! (And allow me to crack on with the beef casserole). You can see where this story is leading can’t you? Yep, ten minutes later I was shuffling along the corridor noting the enormous amount of dried mud JJ had somehow managed to miss and he was shouting “Mummy, you’ve missed a bit” from his perch on the sofa, Chuggington blasting out of his froggy earphones.

Ah well, one week, three bits of fluff less for me to deal with, a trained up child… Hmmm, perhaps some more delegation is required here; next week, the story of EJ’s love of sink cleaning (who knew one small patch of sink would require three quarters of a bottle of Fairy Liquid though? True story…)