Lifestyle Choices

A tycoon millionairess once told me that she found a business easier to run than a home. I’m sure she’s right. I’ve never yet been able to make the housekeeping show a profit, but my system is to run it in the same way as I run an office, with a planned budget, purchasing and filing department (all me). This is not nearly as clever or complicated as it sounds. Any sane woman in a perfect world wouldn’t bother, but if like me you’ve lost two vacuum cleaners and £140 worth of laundry in one year you’ll know it’s worthwhile.

The equipment: All you need to get organized is a writing surface, a chair, a kitchen drawer, a large cardboard box or a bit of shelf space on which to store two wire office trays or a couple of shopping bags (IN and OUT), eight double-sided envelope files with which to start a filing system, a duplicate book, two notebooks, envelopes and writing paper, a handbag diary and notebook, an address book — and some pretty postcards.

Shopping lists: Sellotape a shopping check list of food and household items you often buy in the back of your address book.

Expect — or rather, exact — no cooperation from your family; it will result in a restful state of non- expectancy and consequent non- nagging, non-resentfulness for everyone. The only family rule is: Everyone must write in the shopping list notebook what is about to run out. This works, because the family doesn’t see it as a chore but a sensible necessity. They know if they don’t do it, we will run out of peanut butter or whatever they’re about to scoff.

The mail: I throw incoming mail in a wicker basket on top of the refrigerator and outgoing mail in a string bag hanging by the kitchen door. I open the mail immediately after breakfast and deal with small items by postcard.

It’s easier to write a line than a letter. Try to write thank yous on pretty postcards as soon as you get home, while you’re still feeling grateful. Also use postcards for Christmas thank your: last year’s list was polished off in half an hour. I know a barrister who keeps her postcards already stamped in an elegant basket by her bed.

Weightier things such as bank statements get thrown into the IN tray for Monday morning, when I do all my office work, tardy thank yous, and general organization. Anything which doesn’t get done on Monday doesn’t get done. There is always another Monday.

Bills: Always save business letters, bills and receipts (otherwise what proof have you that you paid cash to the man who mended the sink, when his firm sends you an invoice for it six months later?). This is especially necessary in this unnerving age of automation: computers do go wrong, and people with (or without) computers can be even more inefficient than you.

I may be paranoid but I’ve noticed that computers never go wrong in my favour. And, when you’ve been invoiced for £66.32 for a real pigskin bidet which you haven’t dreamed of, let alone bought, remember that it can take six weeks for a computer to answer the simple question: `What proof have you that this was ordered?’ Keep a duplicate book in your bill file for letters about billsin-query. Don’t send them the receipt which proves you’ve paid; if you do you may lose your proof. Trace the signature or quote the reference.

Work lists: My work notebook is just a list of non-food work to do and reads `buy nametapes’, `order lampshade’, `get new sink stopper’, etc. I never promise to do anything unless I have scribbled it down in a handbag notebook or work book.

Go through these every Monday morning, ticking off a job when you’ve done something about it, and crossing it out when it’s completed. Write work lists on right-hand pages only and make any notes about the job on the left-hand side of the page. So when the laundry promises it will return the purple towel, tick the note, but not until the towel has been welcomed home do you cross it off completely.

Supposing the right-hand page says ‘ Query telephone bill’, on the left-hand page jot the date and name of the person you have discussed it with. If the argument goes on for weeks you can always flip back to that left-hand page and make dated

notes of the continuing saga (it helps to have a wrist watch with a day and date calendar).

I go through six notebooks a year and I keep them (they take up little room in a grocery box under the sofa, and it’s amazing how useful they are).

Always check everything in and out of your house, getting someone to sign in your work notebook for anything they remove. Date it. As service gets worse, people get more harassed and work is skimped or rushed. The busier you are the more you should make it a rule always to keep check of who has what and where. When signing for any parcel always add `not inspected’, or `not tested’, whichever applies.

Jeer if you must, but this sort of efficiency takes no time, only care, and can save a lot of trauma.

The only New Year’s resolution I keep is to look at my yearly list — things to do on 1 January. Sometimes you may feel too frail to cope with things on 1 January, in which case do them as soon as convenient. The list may look dreadful, but I find that mine (reproduced here for your inspiration) took only two hours to sort out last year. On 1 January? No, on 14 February.

NEW YEAR CHECK LIST

Apply for car licence with M.O.T. certificate, registration book and insurance certificate.

Insurance, personal, house, etc.

Check national insurance card is stamped. (If you’re running a business, even the smallest business, consider sending accountant one year’s stamp money in advance.)

• AA membership renewal.
• Check bank standing orders.
• Check passports up to date.
• TV licence.

Service central heating and Ascot, also all electrical appliances such as dishwashers and washing machine. Check roof and gutters, chimneys. Service car.

Income tax: If you use an accountant (perhaps, like me, you work at a part-time business) at the end of your financial year the minimum you should send him is the following:

1. Cheque books, up to date, with stubs properly filled in and list of entries from current cheque books.
2. Bank paying-in book and other bank correspondence.
3. Invoices for work.
4. Order books.
5. Receipts in date order.
6. Diary.
7. Cash flow position at end of year.

If you haven’t an accountant, deal with any income tax work.

New address book: Some people write out a new address book every January, sadly weeding out the dead and discarded. Not a bad idea to do this occasionally because then, when you lose your handbag, you can go back to your old address book.

New diary: In my new diary I jot down all seasonal items : transferring them from year to year. (Sow a lb coarse shade grass seed every March, rake up lawn, ignore existing grass which will look messy for a few days then springs to life. Hose well immediately after.) I also jot odd notes in the back of the diary, knowing that I won’t read them until the year’s end: a Christmas present list, a list of the current medicines the family is dosing itself with, the collar sizes of my favourite men and the overall size of my mother-in-law.

Writer Katharine Whitehorn wants me to recommend her one and only organized habit. Write your name and address and please, please return’ in front of every single note

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