This Covid life: what’s a little mess between friends?

During Covid, cleaning has become a mammoth, terrifying, Sisyphean task. Picture: iStock

The eldest has brought over the lads. Without warning, as he does. The drying rack stands in pride of place near the fire, right near where they’re relaxing. It has various underpants of various sizes displayed upon it, from all six of the house’s inhabitants, along with a few random bras. All somewhat old.

I did not know the lads were coming tonight. I remain stricken upstairs, frozen in horror; cannot go downstairs under any circumstances and say hello to those lovely boys even though I’m very fond of them all. I’ve known them since they were wee lads of 13, and now they are seeing my underpants. And I can never look them in the face again.

The long Covid months have resulted in a testy relationship with tidiness. Dust seems attracted to surfaces like iron filings to a magnet. A delicate tracery of cobwebs accumulates in corners, again and yet again. Tottering piles of books grow ever higher, taunting with their lack of cracked spines. Clean washing looms in a volcanically accusatory pile. Lego pieces jab a tender foot. Someone slips on a scattered drum stick, music from piano practice flutters to the floor and remains there. Ah, the Covid life, and it began so well. So determined, so on top of things. A lifetime ago.

Now it’s all feeling deeply, eccentrically… loose. Like I’m some blousy American heiress forgotten in a Long Island mansion as the ivy and cobwebs grow ever thicker, shutting out all the rules of a correct and proper existence. The possessions are owning us rather than the other way around; everything is too demanding with its need to be sorted, swept, dusted, tidied. Constantly. Meanwhile I drown, feeling like a Covid failure as a super organised and together matriarch of the house. There’s just so much… slippage.

It had never been this. Cleaning had been an act of love – grudging love – to the family and the house. It was also an imperative before any writing work could ever be dived into. As soon as everyone was packed off to work and school the world needed to be tidied to clear the space in the head. There was, I admit, a certain tightness to this arrangement. One child dubbed it “mum’s OCD”. I retorted that it was known as “cleanliness” everywhere else; they looked at me bewildered. Yet the regimen felt transformative. Every day it set me to rights.

Yet during Covid cleaning has become a mammoth, terrifying, Sisyphean task. As some wag once remarked, keeping a house tidy with kids in it is like eating Oreos while you brush your teeth. Then there’s the miraculous realisation that as the mess accumulates, no one notices. Or remarks on it, or cares. Revelation.

The huge-hearted eldest has taken it upon himself to bring home various strays and waifs from his school years. Gorgeous kids who need a bed for the night, and who am I to say no. We’re here to help, always, among the excruciating drying clothes; we’ll never turn them away. An unexpected guest is a great motivator for tidying up yet they often arrive overnight, unexpectedly, so I’ve just had to let the mortification go. A lot of people live closely in these parts. Therefore, expect mess.

Covid has demanded a vast loosening. Something had to give amid all the stresses of this deeply uncertain year. Our home has heaved and creaked with crammed living as we sail through the Covid choppiness yet it feels like a relatively sturdy ship in every department except this one. But as writer Joy Held remarked, “Women with clean houses do not have finished books.” And funnily enough, I’ve just finished a novel. Finally. Miraculously. After nine years. And my world has never been messier.