However, there is one domestic chore over which I am painstaking. Laundry seems to fill otherwise stalwart souls with dread. It needn't. Over many years of domestic management I have perfected a routine that eliminates the most onerous aspects - like ironing, for instance, and the ordeal of Folding Away. For your sakes, I'm prepared to air my dirty linen in public so that you too can keep on top of the family smalls without heartache.
Usually the vicarage line basket looks like this:
Occasionally it looks like this, but that's usually when I've tipped everything out to hunt down my mobile phone:
Transferring one drum-loads worth to the washing machine once the lid no longer shuts has a reassuring visible effect and that's all you need do to keep up appearances for the next week or so. For when the wash programme has finished I leave the contents to marinade for a few days by which time the funny smell justifies another short cycle and defers the Evil Moment of Hanging It All Up.
Next comes the exciting part - sorting through the treasures that miraculously emerge from a hot wash. A bit like a high street ATM is our Bosch - you insert a sheaf of Y-fronts and out comes hard cash (and innumerable bonus extras). Money laundering is big business in the vicarage - but I have to say that Cadbury's Flakes taste better unwashed.
The Evil Moment of Hanging It All Up is made more evil by the blight of socks. It's a curious fact that however many washes you do none of them ever matches up, even when they're all black or striped.
Embrace this as a good thing, though. It means you can put the singletons into a transit camp under the bed which saves you sorting them into their drawers. When the Vicar finally notices that he's run out of black socks he just buys new ones.
Once you have ornamented your airer with underwear, you can take it easy for a couple of days until you find that the lid of the linen basket won't shut again. Then, of course, you have to clear the rack to make way for the next tranche. To do this, fling the relevant items outside the relevant bedroom door and leave them there. This is not indolence, this is teaching your children independence.
Within the week they will have tired of stepping over them to get to their iPods and will gather them up and thrust them back in the linen basket to save themselves the trouble of putting them away. Whereupon you repeat the drum-filling, marinading, rewashing, hanging process and thereby also avoid having to wrestle clothes hangers and half-hinged wardrobe doors.
I can't lie. There will come a point when the landing is inaccessible because of the linen mounds, the laws of gravity forbid any additions to the linen basket, the drying rack is still sagging with last month's washing and the family has run out of underpants. At this stage you do have to bite the bullet and find homes for the backlog. This process need never, though, under any circumstance involve an ironing board. Sheets slept in for a night will only crease up and wrinkles miraculously smooth from clothing after a few hours of wearing.
Nor need you bother about folding. They'll inevitably be hurled to the floor when family members are seeking their missing chewing gum/haemorrhoid cream/dog collars. Simply employ your child's recorder to batten them down so that the drawer/door shuts and, while your neighbours are toiling over their ironing piles, go get a life in front of The Home Show.
The vicarage linen cupboard
Have you any labour-saving tips to share? Or any spare black socks in search of a life partner?
