My house isn’t tidy. This morning, while chatting with a group of friends, Marty suggested that I wouldn’t be able to make it tidy. This just isn’t true (or at least I’m not willing to believe that it’s true). I could treat my house like all the other projects I work on. When I got home today I looked around the house and thought “if my goal was to improve this house how would I do it?”.

I’ve already said that I would like the house to be tidy. But what are the reasons behind this? Do I want to make it tidy just because someone says that I can’t? Or do I have other reasons? I want the house to be tidy because I want my home to be comfortable. I would also like my home to be somewhere I can completely relax. It has all the basic things I require for it to be comfortable and relaxing but when you have to fight to make a path between the books lying on the floor just to cross the room something needs to be done.

That gives me the “why” but how do I go about changing it? It’s been like this for the past five years. What makes me think that I can change it now? I don’t have a lot of time to commit to the project. And if I try to do too much in one go I’ll just get overly tired, fed up and nothing will change. Tony occasionally asks “what’s the biggest bang for the buck”? It’s not a phrase that I overly like – too American – but I do agree with the sentiment. There are lots of things I could do to change the house but they all have different costs associated with them. The resource that I most lack is time. All the time I give to the house is used up with cooking and cleaning and it would cost me too much to give more time. I don’t have anyone else here who could do the work for me (Marty is never going to get the house tidy). As a project my house is under staffed – I need to bring in someone else.

I know people who think that is terrible if a woman can’t do everything herself. I should be able to work full time, cook, clean, have a social life – basically be some sort of 21st Century super woman. But I can’t do everything. I don’t want someone else to tidy my house but I would have the time to do this if someone else was cleaning my house. My first task is to find someone to help me clean the house.