Six sweet hours

So. Now that both small people are at big school, I have one day a week to myself. Well, I say one day, but it’s really only six hours. Still – six sweet solitary hours. Oh, how I dreamed off such a thing in the noisy depths of kid-wrangling days. Stuffing little arms rigid with rage into cosy coats to try and outrun tantrums with a buggy ride in the fresh air, or reluctantly sliding their favourite Wiggles DVD into the player for the 78,560th time that week. Six sweet solitary hours. So, what to do with them? Well, being a lover of decluttering, organising and cleaning, of course I have an epic list to end all lists, jostling with all those jobs I never quite got round to. Cleaning the greenhouse; backing up photos and videos; filing all those digital shots in some sort of system; tidying out the Scary Drawer where everything gets shoved when it doesn’t have a home. You know, the one Michael McIntyre talks about, full of old keys and old mobile phones, and instructions for toasters you haven’t owned for at least 10 years. When I announce to other mums, including my own, that this is what I’m looking forward to now that I’ve got some time, the fleeting looks of confusion mixed with pity are not lost on me. ‘She WANTS to shred old payslips and re-organise the attic? Poor love, she’s forgotten what life was like before kids.’ Don’t forget to do something for yourself, they say. Enjoy your ‘me time’. Sit in the garden with a book, have a look round the shops! Go for coffee and cake with friends! I understand their pleas. I do. I know they are well-meaning. And of course I’m not going to spend every Friday knee-deep in six years of paperwork. I promise. But let me explain. Ever since the children arrived, I’ve mourned the fact that housework, or any little job that needs doing, can no longer be done quickly. When they were babies, every time I started up the vacuum I was convinced I could hear them crying or, as they got older, kicking seven shades out of each other. Dusting the living room takes three times as long when you have a little ‘helper’ insisting on smearing Pledge over every individual piano key. If I had a pound for every time I have yelled ‘just a minute’ from the kitchen as I tried in vain to finish writing a shopping list, or clean the floor, I would be writing this by the pool of my Spanish villa. That’s why the idea of whipping round the house like Mary Poppins after six cans of Red Bull is so appealing. No distractions, no creeping fear when it’s time to turn the vacuum off. No fights to referee halfway through scrubbing the toilet, or Lego Batman to rescue from the toilet while folding the laundry. I fully intend to make another list, one that’s deliciously full of things like spa days, trips to IKEA (another thing that’s better done not only without kids, but also without husbands, who always seem to lose the will to live somewhere around the cushion department), walks on the beach, practising the saxophone, actually getting round to reading everything in the New Yorker for once… And, it goes without saying, coffee and cake with friends. And I will enjoy all these wonderful things even more, because I finished the housework in an hour and still had times to put all my photos into folders.That’s how I roll. PS: The photo of the tasty-looking cake and the wonderful view is from Jessie’s Kitchen in Broughty Ferry, my cake-and-coffee venue of choice. Here’s their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessies-Kitchen/189114634450256?sk=timeline