JMorgan

Last updated 01:00, Thursday, 09 August 2007

STUCK at home with the kids during the past week, I’ve been so bored I’ve actually cleaned the house.

I don’t mean my usual domestic routine which involves me vacuuming in a circle (moving furniture happens as often as Jodie Marsh wearing something tasteful) and flicking a duster over surfaces – narrowly avoiding any corners.

No, I mean the hardcore stuff – vacuuming the mattress, cleaning wardrobes and washing blinds.

Usually when the kids are at school I use my free time wisely by catching up on Britain’s Next Top Model, reading the latest magazines, and avoiding the dust (if I don’t wear my glasses around the house, I find my home looks immaculate. It’s very rare I want to waste the days doing actual housework).

However, cooped up with small boys on a rainy day, the only escape was to head upstairs and be forced into doing all those jobs you pray the domestic fairy will just appear and sort out.

I’ve also become addicted to Anthea Turner’s domestic goddess programme, which is, in my case, a bit like people who can’t cook an egg watching elaborate gallic cooking on a obscure French channel.

Each week Anthea takes two demented women, harassed with families, work and the dirty and dishevelled state of their homes and teaches them practical tips such as sorting out an under-the-stairs closet or how to decorate a raspberry sponge. I can’t get enough of it.

When I first watched the programme I did so to shout abuse at the screen and to try and make myself feel good i.e. “I have better things to do with my life than alphabetisise my herbs.’’

Now I have been seduced by Anthea’s fabulous home, set in acres of landscaped gardens, and which has perfectly-plumped cushions, cakes made with lilac icing and any clutter hidden in baskets.

Her motto: “If it’s not beautiful, practical or seriously sentimental, throw it away!’’ is now my mantra.

Subsequently, you would have found me last week surrounded by two bin blacks filled with old clothes (nothing that ever, by any stretch of the word, will be termed vintage), Jackie Collins novels from 1985 and half-empty make-up bottles (I’ve just read you can catch rabies or leprosy, or such like, from the germs in these containers).

My mother has spent years trying to shame me into cleaning the house like a “proper’’ woman. It has taken boredom and Anthea’s baskets to finally show me the error of my ways.