How do you keep your house tastefully uncluttered and moderately hygienic without having full-time staff? I haven't cracked that one yet.

Since young families find it so difficult to buy houses these days, I'm thinking that we should introduce full service-rented accommodation. In my ideal world, this hotel-suite style accommodation would include housekeeping, leisure facilities (swimming pool, tennis courts and so on), on-site childcare and room service.

If you're not Michael Jackson, or even your common-or-garden millionaire, you haven't a hope of any of these things. So maybe we should rethink the way we live.

In the meantime, we have to convince our children to be tidier. But how? They're experts at conning us. Say, for example, your child has left his or her homework spread all over the dining-room table. You ask him or her to put it away.

"Oh, please. I'm not finished," you might hear. So you may suggest that your child take the homework up to his or her room, to work at the new desk you bought in Habitat. "It's lonely up there," they reply.

You could try negotiating, as in "tidy it away while we have dinner, then you can put it back." You may hear in response: "But Mum/Dad, I've got an exam on Thursday!" At which point you give up and everybody eats in front of the TV, which is what your child wanted in the first place.

The same goes for making beds, putting away clothes, tidying up toys ("this Lego Castle took me hours to make!") and going to bed on time ("Kirsty's Home Videos is my favourite show!").

You cannot win. Showing by example, I'm told, is the only way. So I'll have to start making my bed, putting away my clothes, tidying up my desk and going to bed on time. Did I mention that it's 2 a.m. as I write this?