Where’s my picket fence?

I have had an exhausting couple of weeks. Work is hectic. My inbox is filling faster than I can clear it and I have had back to back meetings almost every day. I am commuting from Cape Town to Johannesburg to Bloemfontein on a weekly basis, living out of a suitcase, working 12 hour days and coming “home” to an empty hotel room. This is one of those times when I wish I were a doting housewife living the simple life.

The key to being a good housewife, as far as I can tell, is efficiency and planning. And as an engineer, I think I would be excellent at running a home like a well-oiled machine. To be honest, I often fantasize about drawing up cleaning and inspection schedules for my domestic worker to follow. You know… like with different frequencies for inspecting and cleaning different rooms and objects in my flat, with pictures of how things should look before and after cleaning… But I just never get around to it.

If I were a housewife, I would simply execute those schedules and checklists like clockwork. And of course build a replenishment forecasting tool on Excel to manage my grocery inventory and work in progress stocks (e.g. of work in progress… frozen, grated tomato cubes ready for adding to a dish on the stove). And in my spare time design a system to route all the grey water from the kitchen and bathroom down to the garden. And get solar panels installed to reduce my household’s electricity consumption.

Yep. Domestic bliss.