Tonight, I lost my shit with the boys over and over again. Why? They were out of the house for five hours and I spent the entire time they were gone tidying and cleaning – just trying to make some headway so that I could start to feel the millstone lifting a little.

My hallway was actually tidy!

By the time I went to pick them up I had tackled my bedroom, blitzed the bathroom and cleared the hallway of the crap that’s been blocking our way for days (weeks). I felt good. My mind felt clearer. I felt calmer – ready to face the next few days of the summer holidays with my darling children.

But within minutes of them being back in the house the stress levels started to creep up – I still had loads more housework to do, and while I tackled dinner prep, I could hear them destroying the semi-ok playroom.

Dinner time was a battle – W refused to eat what was on his plate and again my stress levels shot up. I was so angry at him!!! Why won’t he eat it?? It’s all things he likes, but because they were cooked or presented in a different way he flatly refused. I sent them upstairs for a bath. Then realised it was only six o’clock. Dammit! No way I can get them into bed that early. So while I sorted laundry in my room, I packed them back off downstairs to amuse themselves. I went about my laundry business, noticing on my way that W hadn’t done a great job of putting his clean clothes away last night, things were a jumbled mess in his drawers. Queue stress levels on the rise again.

When I got back downstairs (and had made myself a gin) I ventured into the playroom. Lego explosion. “Right”, said I, “get tidying this up please”. Partly because the thought of having to do one more late-night-Lego-tidy was enough to send me in the gin bottle to find the bottom, and partly because I know one of the critical parts of this process is going to be getting the boys to clean up after themselves.

They have a star chart – they get rewarded when they do things like make their beds, put their dirty clothes in the laundry basket and doing a five minute tidy up. And then, after they’ve amassed the agreed number of stars I get fleeced for the equivalent of a month’s food budget in the Lego shop.

My stumbling block is always the energy it requires to make them do those things – nine times out of ten any request is met with a groan (or a flat out “no” from W) – so I end up shouting/taking away pudding/bedtime stories and generally feeling like a grade z parent. And the playroom still looks like a plastic-eating giant suffered a bout of d&v.

I know the more they do it, the less of a battle it will become. As with almost everything related to parenting, Consistency is the answer. I just wish it was gin.