20 weeks old - oh the mess

At university I was sometimes known as Monica. People used to ruffle the rug in my room just to wind me up - and in the second year my cleaning rota was constantly scorned and the bathroom left in a disgusting state until I gave in a cleaned it even if it wasn't my week. While 10 years with Mr Jones has forced me to relax on the OCD cleaning you may well recall that in the latter stages of my pregnancy I spent about 22 hours a day attached to the hoover or mop.

These days I'm lucky if I manage to get the hoover out once a week. I have vacuum withdrawal symptoms. I feel like I need some kind of support group. "My name is Rebecca Jones and I'm a former clean freak who now lives in a slovenly pit". I just don't have time for cleaning - Rufus thinks it's a waste of his day. I tidy, frequently, and the washing machine is constantly on - but my house is no where near as clean as I'd like it to be.

Mr Jones has a different level of acceptable cleanliness. He once exploded a hole punch over his bedroom floor at the beginning of term and by Easter the paper confetti was still adorning the carpet. The living room floor in his shared house was home to a scalextric track, which wove it's way around plates of furry mould encrusted food remants and empty pizza boxes. The bathroom was so disgusting that I used to go home to pee.

I am happy to report that over the last 10 years his standards have been raised to a whole new level - but his tolerance of filth still hovers somewhere way below mine.

That is why, when Mr Jones suggested that while Rufus and I were away on holiday he might give the house a good going over, that I knew things had gotten bad, really bad. So it's not just me that can see the marks on the kitchen cabinets, or the dust on the book shelves? Are other people aware of the cat hair on the stairs and the footprints on the windowsill? Is someone else irritated by the baby handprints on every mirror in the house and are the watermarks on the shower screen glaring at anyone who use our bathroom?

My dad recently found a old book on good housekeeping and childcare. Among the many choice passages, this manual for all exceptional wives and mothers, suggested that the house should be an arena of calm cleanliness when your beloved husband walks through the door after a long day at work. After a day cleaning the house and taking care of the children I should neaten myself up, apply a bit of lipstick and plaster a smile on my face to greet him in the hallway. The children should be clean and angelic, playing quietly, or better still, already tucked up in bed..... it goes on - and on and on.

So what does Mr Jones see when he walks through the door? A picture of 1950s domesticity with a nipped in waist, perfectly coiffed hair and a neatly swaddled baby - does he heck. I'm usually on the floor, my bottom hanging out of pair of mud spattered jeans, my hair wild from a trek across some field or other. The living room is generally scattered with toys, the dinner is usually half prepared, there are bits on the floor, cobwebs on the ceiling and the baby is most certainly not bathed and ready for bed (that's Mr Jones' job).

I would love to be the perfect housewife - but somehow I just can't seem to manage it. I feel guilty if I leave Rufus to play on the floor while I hoover - and his naptimes are too precious to disturb with a roaring vacuum. I've tried to make like Mary Poppins and turn cleaning into a game, but a five month old doesn't really get it. So I sit in the evenings, worn out after a day of play, and listen to the dust bunnies scuttling under the sofa and watch the cobwebs idly weave themselves across each room. Inside I cry just a tiny bit for my lovely tidy pre baby house.

I love the days I get to run the hoover round and file away the paper work. But on the ones in between I remind myself of a little poem sent to me by a good friend:

When my children look back on today,
I hope they see a mother who had time to play,

There will be years for cleaning and cooking,
But children grow up when you're not looking.

So, settle down cobwebs, and dust go to sleep,
I'm cuddling my baby, and babies don't keep.

Giving up the sloven

I hold my hands up and confess to the fact that I have a cleaner - she comes once a week (15 minutes early and always catches me in my pjs or mid breakfast - or these days post vomit). She hoovers and cleans the hob and does the bathroom and generally keeps on top of the weekly clean. This however is a double edged sword - it allows me to believe that my house is clean and that I need not get out the hoover, clean under the bed, or wipe the fronts of the kitchen cupboard. So if you look closely you will see that my house really isn't all that clean - well not the sort of clean that I like anyway.

Mr Jones and I have different ideas as to what clean is - I'd like clean sheets every day - he likes the slept in feel. He therefore is perfectly happy with the weekly clean by our somewhat mute Polish "woman that does". I, on the other hand, am suffering frequent paroxysms (heard only by myself and the cats) about the state of the bin cupboard. I know it's a bin cupboard and by nature is supposed to be a bit gross - but I just feel the need to clean it. The thing is the vomiting is rather limiting when it comes to getting down and dirty with the Dettol (or Ecover as it is in our house - but I like alliteration). And Mr Jones can't be persuaded by any stretch of the imagination to clean out a bin cupboard in his rare moments at home (he's still in Scotland).

Apparently this need to clean (I want to move the sofas, sort out all the paperwork, clean under the beds, weed out the wardrobes and rearrange and wipe down the kitchen cupboards) is something to do with being pregnant. A nesting instinct as it were. So the next time I get some spare time, feel a mite human and can get my hands in my marigolds I will be found cleaning out the bin cupboard. Unless of course some kind person finds it in their heart to come and lift me out of my slovenly habits before that day.