Where's the grown-up?

This one's for my sisters, with whom I was discussing this very problem last weekend...

Have you ever noticed something out of place in your home, or car, and then, perhaps a few days later, noticed it again and thought “Why hasn’t anyone done anything about that yet?” This happens to me ALL the time, and then I get that sinking realisation that there is no-one else who is going to do anything about it. Either because it’s one of those little things that no-one else in the house would notice anyway, or because (a harsher truth) no-one else cares enough to do anything about it. Or, worse still, it was me that put the thing in that place, and maybe everyone else thinks I still want it to be there, even when that thing is a Thermos mug of now furry tea that’s been in the car for a week. And that’s when I wish there was a grown-up about the place to help.

I’ve officially been a grown-up for quite some time now, and I’ve made it worse by becoming a parent. Before I had children I had time to tidy up after myself (ok, this doesn’t mean I always did tidy up, but I could have done, easily), and generally speaking, things stayed in the places I wanted them to, and weren’t moved, hidden or otherwise appropriated by anyone else. If there was a mess, I knew for definite I had to deal with it. But somehow, now there are three other people in my life, the lines have got blurred. I no longer have time for, well, anything (at least it feels like that sometimes), and quite often I can say hand on heart that I certainly didn’t put that thing there, so why oh why should it be me that has to clear it up?

The problem is - actually there are three problems:

Firstly, I really do want everything to be tidy and in its place. I am a bit of a control freak about this. I dream of spotless minimalist interiors. I would organise and label everything in matching Martha Stewart jars, boxes and shelving units if I could, except that the rest of my family would first laugh at me for being so anal, and then ignore the system to the point where I couldn’t fight the chaos any more.

So in many cases, there genuinely is no-one in the house who cares as much as I do about the heaps of toys in the bathroom, or where the colouring pencils live, or about the fact that there seems to be an odd sock, a lego brick, a sandwich box, two books, a hairbrush, a juggling ball, a shoe, an unidentifiable smell, and a heap of coloured paper under the sofa.

Secondly, some of these tasks are things I can’t do on my own, because I’ve never learnt (changing light-bulbs in the car), or because they require two people (putting things up into the loft which can only be reached by a rickety step-ladder), or because my husband has instilled in me such a lack of confidence that I daren’t try because I know it matters to him that it is ABSOLUTELY perfect, and that I won’t do it well enough (basically anything that involves drilling holes in the wall, or anything to do with gas, electricity, plumbing or computers) but with a 4-hour daily commute and an average office-day of 10 hours in the middle (and since February, a broken wrist as well), he doesn’t have time to do these things or to help me do them so, you guessed it, they don't get done, and I keep noticing them again and again...

Thirdly - and this is the real crunch-point: I don’t want any of this to be my responsibility. I don’t want to have to be the only one who has time or energy to care about dirty socks under my daughter’s bed, or discarded pants on the bathroom floor, or the mouldy food in the car, or the splatters of coffee on the cupboard door next to the dishwasher, or where all the working biros have gone, or the amazing build-up of spiders’ webs in the conservatory... I want someone else to care enough and have time enough to help me: I want there to be a more-grown-up-than-me grown-up in the house so I don't have to be one all the time. I’m tired of being responsible!

Now, will someone please pick up all those toys “someone” seems to have thrown out of their pram? Oh - and tell the butler I’ll take tea in the drawing room...

Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

I'm linking this up to Sarah Miles' Monday Club - do pop over and see what she and the others have been up to...