How to Be a Domestic Slattern

Posted by Verity on August 19, 2024 in Blog, Consumer issues, Humour, Living today, Wishes | 4 comments

Having recently had a birthday, I was musing about what wisdom I had acquired over my long life that I could impart to younger generations. I came to the depressing conclusion that anything I had to pass on was deeply trivial, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron. Plato, Voltaire and de Beauvoir have no need to look to their laurels.

This is because, as I’ve realised, all my accumulated wisdom relates to the domestic sphere. A shocking admission for a dame to make? No – let’s give domestic labour the respect it deserves.

I’m going to call this folk wisdom, aimed at getting the best results with the minimum of grief and effort (leaving you free to do other things). This is ruthless efficiency on par with anything you could learn at Harvard Business School. So here, for what it’s worth, are my hard-won lessons, categorised by room for ease of use:

In the bathroom

• Do not get a clear shower screen, particularly if you live in a hard water area. You will spend your life trying to fend off limescale. Even when it’s not there you will think you see it. Why not get one that already has a jolly pattern of water drops on it?

In the bedroom

• Get duvet covers with the same pattern on both sides. If you are as obsessive about these things as I am you will struggle in vain to stop the obverse pattern appearing on the uppermost side.
• Not a tip, but a plea to manufacturers: milk bottles come with blue, green, red and gold tops, so why don’t duvet makers colour-code their offerings similarly? Pale shades of blue for single, green for double, pink for king, etc. would make the arrival of guests and the change of seasons so much more painless, because you can guarantee that no matter where you put your identifying label you will have to pull out every duvet you own to find it.

In the kitchen

• Never, ever, add the amount of liquid specified in a soup recipe. If you do, you will have a thin gruel that even Oliver Twist would turn his nose up at. Add half the amount and increase gradually.
• Every vinaigrette recipe I’ve ever come across has the wrong ratio of oil to vinegar, IMHO. Three parts oil to one part vinegar = vile. Five parts oil to one part vinegar = more like it.
• Beware any recipe that has horseradish sauce in it. The default amount for it seems to be two tablespoons. Your guests could sue you for this.
• Double the cooking time of any dish involving potatoes in the oven (except, weirdly, baked potatoes), such as gratin dauphinois. I don’t know what kinds of oven these chefs have, but they are clearly, in modern parlance, more ‘turbocharged’ than mine. I have too many bitter memories of desperately poking potatoes as the hours ticked by.

Around the house generally

• I’ve covered this before, but it’s worth repeating. Don’t repaint chipped white skirting boards; touch them up with Tippex – yes, you can still buy it. Remember, anyone scrutinising your skirting boards at close quarters is not your friend (if they’re your family, God help you… )

I admit that as life lessons go, these are pretty meagre, but if I can spare even one person – man or woman – a moment of unnecessary effort or culinary embarrassment, it will all have been worth it.