I am a rather creative type and used to live life ‘on the hoof’, as it were. This sort of ad hoc, bohemian existence suited me well in my twenties and thirties, but since settling down and having children my situation has changed a great deal. I now work from home full time and am the primary carer of three young boys, all of whom are fairly boisterous. My wife works away from home, so I handle the majority of household tasks.For many years, I cooked and cleaned up after only myself. Washing up was done late at night, if at all, and generally left until I could stand it no longer. The laundry was sent out to be laundered and I had a cleaning lady who would clean the house once a week, muttering under her breath as she went.
However, our circumstances changed when we married, as we could no longer afford a cleaner or launderette. So you can imagine the shock when I was faced with running a house myself, looking after a baby and still trying to work as hard as I had done before. Whilst I managed to keep on top of the weekly clean, the kitchen was another matter.
By about three months into being a parent, it had deteriorated into looking like a bomb site and has looked this way ever since. My saintly other half does her best to clear it up at the weekends, but frankly we both have our hands full. There just seems to be a never-ending pile of dirty dishes, forks, knives and cups, plus a pile of clean stuff on the other side of the sink that needs to be dried, sorted and put away.
After a particularly stressful weekend, I decided enough was enough. The kitchen had been a mess for too long. Sticking my chest out, I thought to myself – I am the man of the house! I am going to sort this out. And I did.
It was actually very simple to do so. I merely invested in a sink drainer I had found online. All the sink drainer does is allow ample room for crockery and cutlery to be stacked and left to dry. Once dry they can be put away without the need to towel dry.
Within a day of installing the drainer in our kitchen, the whole place looked more organised. The time I would have spent drying and organising clean cutlery and crockery was used instead to wash up the remaining items and to wipe down the surfaces.
The result of my discovery is that I now have a tidy kitchen and a very happy wife. The kids have been calmer too, although that might be because now I have the sink drainer I have threatened them with having to do the dishes when they get too rowdy!