The Yummy Mummy’s Family Handbook. Liz Fraser

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Create hiding places. These are not for you to hide in when people come inside and realise what a slob you are, but so you can easily hide all the mess. Put curtains or cupboard doors in front of lower shelves to disguise all the toy boxes; find furniture that doubles as storage, such as benches or window seats; and store all the children’s stuff in big, beautiful baskets or chests. When all that bright plastic is piled into a gorgeous container it looks much better!

      

Coordinate and conceal. Even the ugliest collection of odds and ends can look reasonably smart if it is well-housed. Matching pretty boxes, baskets or other containers create an air of unity and organisation, which conceals the fact that all is chaotic. Keys, gloves and the rest of the usual entrance-hall para-phernalia can be thrown into coordinated storage places and suddenly all looks neat again.

      

Habits. Nobody can help you out here except yourself. Get out of the routine of chucking your coat on the table as soon as you get in and leaving your shoes beside the shoe rack. Relearn new, tidy habits through lots of practice and you will eventually find that the place looks after itself. Now, if you can just get the other family members to do the same…

      You’ve Got Mail: Dealing with the family admin

      What is it about being a small group of people who live quite peacefully and law-abidingly together that makes so many organisations, institutions and double-glazing companies send you so much mail? Every week the contents of our paper recycling box represent the wood from a small sapling at the very least, and possibly even that of a small tree, and half of it is unopened.

      Bank statements, bills, reminders (for me, usually), credit-card offers, child-benefit forms, inland-revenue notices, school letters, magazine subscriptions (oops, me again), party invitations…the list of things to deal with can become overwhelming, even for the most efficient paper-pushers in a household. And that’s to say nothing of the mess all of this paper creates.

      There are only two outcomes of being flung into a sea of paperwork: you sink, or you float. Assuming that floating is the preferred option, avoiding as it does any tut-tutting from your in-laws and a visit from the bailiffs, then systems need to be put in place to help you swim. These do not involve pushing forms under the carpet, moving unopened envelopes from one table to another, or assuming the other person will deal with it. Instead, you need a family in-tray and a clear idea of who deals with what.

      

Deal with as much mail as you can the moment you get to it. At least half of it will go immediately into the recycling box, and this will make the job look less daunting.

      

Sort the rest into urgent and non-urgent. Leave all urgent things in the middle of your work space in the kitchen so you can’t do anything until you’ve paid that bill or RSVPed that invitation.

      

Get a nice container for all non-urgent incoming mail. Ours is a pretty, metal hanging basket, and it’s very narrow so it fills up quickly. As soon as it looks even full-ish we know it’s time to go through it. This means nothing is ever more than a week old when we come to deal with it, which is usually fine—it’s non-urgent, see?

      

Know who pays which bills. In impressively forward-thinking fashion, my husband pays all the household bills and credit cards. Actually, we only have one credit card, but he still checks the bill and pays it every month. This is so embarrassingly old-fashioned that I cringe as I think of it, but it saves me so much hassle that I am prepared to live with the scolding from ghosts of feminists past. Anyway, I deal with everything else, like baby-sitters, all school correspondence, sorting out school holidays and half-terms, making sure my children get to see a dentist more than twice before they are teenagers, and tons more. This set-up works for us, and it means we avoid most ‘What do you mean, “Have I cancelled the direct debit for the gas”? I didn’t even know we had one’ arguments. Sometimes old-fashioned rocks.

      

Destroy the evidence. Never throw away any documents that have your bank details or address clearly visible on them. This goes for recycling too. Either get a small shredder for such material or make sure you rip it up into teeny-weeny pieces before throwing it away. Those identity fraudsters are not ashamed to go through your bin.

      

Be honest. This applies to every chapter of this book, of course: honesty is the bedrock of all relationships, along with firm abs and a man who knows his wife is always right (it’s best you know right from the start that I’m joking when I say things like this, otherwise the next 400 pages won’t go down well at all). Not owning up to the girly lunch and spending spree you enjoyed last month will not only cause trouble when it crops up on the statement, but it will also result in understandably wavering trust on his part. If you love each other there’s nothing you need to hide, or feel so bad about that he won’t forgive you. Honesty, trust and forgiveness—it’s quite simple, and it works.

      Family Notice Board: Weddings, funerals and other family gatherings

      If there’s one thing guaranteed to create some kind of family ripple, wave or tsunami it’s a family gathering. It’s hard enough just getting along with those in your immediate family, without throwing grannies, aunts, in-laws and lots of alcohol into the mix as well, but it’s occasionally required that the whole gaggle of you get together to celebrate somebody’s birth, death, marriage or whatever.

      Enough has been written about such gatherings to fill the hole in the ozone layer, because there is just so much potential for a good story. A bust-up, a reunion, a love affair, a drunken argument, grannies getting sloshed, uncles flirting, mothers weeping—oh, it’s all there when a family gets together, so you had better be prepared for some fireworks.

      Weddings

      I’ve been to a silly number of weddings in the last ten years, and they have all fallen into two categories: those that allow children, and those that don’t. There is rarely any in-between category, unless the bride and groom are prepared to fight it out with those relatives or friends whose kids have been singled out and banned from attending. ‘No, it’s not because they are evil, noisy, smelly little bastards, but because there isn’t enough room in the chapel’ will never work.

      Having kids at a wedding can be lovely: it brings a special kind of ‘Ah, this is what it’s all about’ joy to the occasion, and there are always moments of mirth when a three-month-old burps loudly, or a toddler is heard asking why the bride’s mother is wearing such a disgusting hat. But it can also be a pain in the neck. Nobody wants the ‘I do’ they’ve been rehearsing for three months to be drowned out by screaming, their table decorations to be used as ammunition between rival cousins, or the dance floor to turn into a Wiggles concert.

      

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