As an anal person, I never used to understand why some people lived in a mess. I just didn’t get untidiness, because I’m someone who is never happier than when everything is in its place.

Now I can explain it.  It’s called living with a small goat toddler. (Motherhood)

Take my shoes. Arch, from around the age of eight months, has seen my shoe rack as a climbing frame – a delightful, surprising climbing frame which quickly becomes nice sticks to put in your mouth and poke in your eye and bang with. What fun!

Having demolished one shoe rack, I knew he would only demolish the next and the next. There was no point in attempting to replace it so I  saved my pennies and my shoes remained in an unseemly pile on the floor.

Learning to tolerate untidyness

I tolerated it because I had to, just as I had to tolerate knives, glasses, remote controls, files and books being stowed in odd places. No one wants to keep their loo brush on the window sill, but sometimes needs must. I get it now.

I also get not having enough time deal with it all. For instance the goat, I mean Arch, pulled out the kitchen drawer with such force one day that it broke and suddenly we had nowhere to store our cutlery. We put it into glasses on a high shelf until we had time to go to a kitchen shop to buy a new drawer. Two years later…..

Canny readers will detect the use of the past tense here.  Arch is now four and slowly, slowly our house is being restored. My ambition is for our home to be “just so” by the time he starts school in September.

The very hope is making me feel deeply and anally happy. Meanwhile, I look at this and enjoy because, believe me, I’ve been waiting years….