The price of domestic chores By now, with three children under the age of 11 and a husband who still exercises every day but is oddly even less able to wash his own kit, I often think of T.S.Eliot as I kneel on a tiled floor and the melancholy Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock lamenting "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." That's me that is - but with scoops of washing powder. Admittedly my biceps are now beginning to bear the flabbiness that arises once you hand over the lion's share of the laundry to a super-efficient Polish woman named Monika. But programmed as I am to load, twist, pour, click, stand back and sigh with perverse satisfaction, I am pathologically unable to hand over complete responsibility for my family's togs. And besides, putting-a-wash-on bestows a fulfilling sense of getting-a-job-done, especially on the days when small children seem to interrupt every semi-productive act. I may not make the beds, fully unstack the dishwasher or tidy up the shoes in the hall, but I can always manage to bung a dark garments load on and absorb the reassuring vibrations in the knowledge that at least something in the house is being productive. Perhaps this is the reason why I am so quick to whip a slightly soiled t-shirt off a child's back at the end of the day and lob it into any one of the three dirty-washing baskets we have upstairs: its route to renewal is simple against a complicated backdrop of daily working parent challenges. My own mum balks at the pyjamas that hit the basket due to a mere spattering of porridge. I recall nighties that lasted whole school terms before they got a wash; my own children are lucky if they get two nights out of a pair of (ironed - thanks, again, Monika) White Company pyjamas. It's a type of insanity - social services aren't going to come round, whip back the covers and snatch my kids away because a Cheerio has cemented itself to a 100% cotton collar. But a freshly bathed child hugging you goodnight in a clean pair of pyjamas is one of life's greatest pleasures. If they are then climbing into a bed with freshly laundered sheets...well, life doesn't get much better than that. Whatever the chaos in my otherwise beleaguered life, I can momentarily believe that I am the creator of my own John Lewis ad. The house we now inhabit has a separate laundry room and I would give up almost anything else to keep such luxury in a mere 2m x 3m space. I don't care if we lose everything tomorrow and have to move to a two-bedroom house. We would sleep five-in-a-room and keep the other as a utility room. It is the industrious heart of this home and was carefully designed with efficiency in mind. No trendy Victorian ceiling mounted drier here, but two plastic retractable washing lines, two collapsible clothes horses and four laundry baskets: two for dirty, one for ironing, one for already ironed. It's the only room in the house bestowed with underfloor heating which blows our electricity bill through the roof but is worth every penny for the glorious glow of knowing school shirts are drying themselves on even the coldest days. I once visited a hard-working pal who had moved into a stunning new family home in Kew. Yes, there was a gym, several bedrooms and an eye-watering dressing room, but the part that made my jaw-drop was the laundry room. It was easily the size of an average family lounge with double-height fitted units, a permanently erected ironing board, two washing machines and two driers; eight separately labelled washing baskets (wools, whites, shirts etc) plus a flat-screen TV for the hired help who spent most of her day in there. For a brief moment, I wanted her job. Whenever I see this friend, I ask about her laundry room and get her to describe it in all its sensuous detail. If you're a fan of Fifty Shades of Grey and long for a Red Room, you'll know what I'm talking about. Optimistic idiot that I am, last summer I thought it would be a good idea to do a UK-based driving holiday with the kids staying at lovely little hotels as we made our way to Devon. But I had not anticipated the lack of a washing machine. Of course, I had packed enough clothes to last the journey, but once two plastic bags were filled with grey socks and favourite hoodies covered in ice-cream I was getting distinctly jittery. We checked into a glorious B&B in Clearwell, the very village in whose castle we had been married 11 years earlier. We could see the ramparts from the room and while hubby reminisced about the day, I spotted the Jacuzzi bath. Half an hour later, I locked myself in under the pretence of taking a soak and sat beside it, sipping champagne as the complimentary shampoo did a grand job of shifting ketchup. I didn't need the ONS to quantify that moment for me. It was priceless.