The cost of living crisis is making me look like a bad mum

"It's highlighted my many domestic deficiencies and I fear my family is suffering."

The cost of living is impacting most Aussie households right now, mine included. 

While I should preface this by saying that my family is one of the luckier ones, with two steady incomes, a relatively steady mortgage, and some disposable income, we have also made some considerable changes to our lifestyle and spending over the past year or so. 

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I am 'domestically challenged'

In doing this though, an unhealthy obsession with the cash-for-cans incentive has been revealed (yes, I have retrieved accidentally disposed of cans and bottles from my recycle bin) but perhaps most cornering is the exposure of a longstanding truth about myself, one I had hoped to keep buried...

I am domestically inept.

You see, B.S.C.O.F.I (a.k.a before sh*tty cost of living issues), I would splash out on a fortnightly cleaner (mostly to clean my bathrooms); we would purchase takeaway once a week and my husband didn’t have to travel as much for work.

That's all changed - and it's had some unflattering consequences.

Me and my muffin mix and the birthday cake we made. Image: Supplied

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The baking mishap

Many would say that cooking, cleaning, shopping more thriftly and spending less on eating out is just part of the responsibility of being an adult. And fair call - but I am an adult who does not like doing a lot of these tasks, or at least as much as I can avoid them.

Oh and I'm crap at them.

I’ll begin with my efforts in the kitchen. 

A kids meal I had when I was on holiday (it was so incredibly sh*t, yet still better than anything I could make.) Image: Supplied

BSCOFI, my husband would do the lion’s share of meal cooking. I opted for the clean-up afterwards. But now that he is often interstate or working late, I have dutifully picked up the pots, pans, and wok and become the household chef more frequently.

Except, well, I haven’t really become a ‘chef.’ Instead, I continually mistime the cooking duration of protein and vegetables resulting in overcooked veggies which resemble baby food, chicken that’s a tad pink on the inside and charcoal-infused everything. 

Often, I can fix the mess I have created (or at least hide it) but sometimes (like the rock-hard chicken) well it has crossed the line from edible to something else entirely. 

These failures mean a menu modification: canned baked beans, omelets, or toasties, which will be dinner instead and sometimes these aren’t even that great either.

Aside from meals, I have also attempted to bake! (My Baker’s Shop teacher from Year nine would be proud…. or more accurately, very concerned). 

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I started with the simple stuff: muffin mix from a box.

There’s a go-to muffin mix our family loves that is actually really low in fat (Betty Crocker’s apple and cinnamon muffin mix, FYI). Usually, my kids are in charge of this because I want them to have the life skills I do not.

But one weekend, attempting to create some treats from their lunchboxes for the following school week, I thought, why not, if they can do it, I can.

Wrong. 

There are three steps in this recipe method, and I managed to miss one entirely: I forgot to put the apple in. So, we had cinnamon muffins which were not anywhere (understandably) as well received. 

Shona with her husband. Image: supplied

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More domestic ineptitude 

Unfortunately, it isn’t just my lack of kitchen skills that lead me astray. As mentioned earlier, I had a cleaner for a while who would do fortnightly deep cleans of our bathrooms, a job I’d say most people hate doing. 

While we do vacuum, sweep and mop regularly (we are not complete animals), it dawned on me that our shower and bathtub had not been paid this same attention, I’d guess for a month, (so yes, maybe we are animals).

Upon seeing a speck of mould though I realised, we had to act. And so, left to my own devices I sprayed the mould with mould killer, the shower with some other chemical-filled product that had a bathroom label and got to work.

But with my domestic ineptitude and lack of common sense, I did this, with the shower door and window closed and no fan on meaning I was left dizzy and with a headache that could not be dulled.

In a sign of hope, though, and under the safe guidance of my daughters, we baked a cake from scratch (yes, really) for my husband’s birthday. And it worked without any major incidents (only two emotional meltdowns which is okay right?!). 

Originally published as The cost of living crisis is making me look like a bad mum