Laid Back Mummy

I’ve become disenchanted with housewifery. Specifically, the maintenance of the house, husband and toddler part.

My days are whiled away mopping up substances not meant for home furnishings, trawling round supermarkets whilst Chickie clobbers me with whatever he considers will cause the most pain from the trolley and ironing clothes so they’ll look their best when thrown on the floor. All of which prevents me from fully engaging in more enjoyable activities, such as shopping, reading and eating out.

Stuck in a rut and in need of a plan to inject some excitement into Groundhog Day, I secretly remortgaged the house and booked a one way flight to Rio. Okay, not really. Instead, I pondered my predicament whilst standing at the end of my road watching a cement mixer go round and round whilst Chickie pointed out the 136 litre drum capacity and patented mix and tip design. Three builders looked back at the gleeful toddler doing his excited little penguin dance and the glazed mummy who they all thought fancied them. The Refuse Collectors also cast me sorry glances as, every week, I wait outside (with Chickie!) to bid them good morning and wave at the driver of the truck as he crawls past.

Yes, it was definitely time for a lifestyle review. But first I had to deal with the time consuming and inconvenient problem of domestic responsibilities. It proved easier than anticipated. I stopped ironing altogether and adopted a new approach to housework. I called it, “The Speed Clean”. You dust only when others are due round and then, only the bits from their eye line down. Then, invigorated by three Red Bulls and two big bags of Skittles, you do it really, really quickly – shaving three hours off of the weekly dust.

Next I rescheduled supermarket shopping to the evening. Genius on three counts. One, Chickie can’t attack me when he’s at home asleep. Two, Tesco’s half empty so it’s twice as fast. Three, I get to go out after 6pm!

That just left my small, but time thirsty, companion. He turned round, on cue, his “I’ve just been naughty” face set to “extremely naughty”. His lips and nostrils sported a heavy layering of sand and bark and his eyes sparkled with anticipation as he waited for the fireworks.

And that’s when the brainwave hit. If my calculations were correct, I could save a whopping 70 hours a week by disregarding discipline altogether. Round trips to the naughty step alone took up 3 hours a day, tongue scraping a further 30 minutes, not to mention the endless negotiations and blackmail necessary to ‘motivate’ my poppet to comply with any of my suggestions.
Chickie, perplexed by my lack of interest, began filling his pants with sand.

I lay back in my deck chair, opened my magazine and took a long sip of lemonade, surprised how easy it was to be a Laidback Mummy after all.