I make no bones about not being a superwoman. Although I want to be Martha Stewart when I grow up, based on the level of housekeeping at my house, I am clearly not grown up yet.

I have found the only way I can get through the days and weeks is by dropping my standards on many things and sticking with what's important to me. As a result I focus on safety, nutrition and hygiene and not what I consider to be the superficialities of tidiness and magazine-shoot-ready decorating.

Most days my house looks like a wreck but we have clean clothes and nice meals and seem to muddle through OK.

My housekeeping seems to have ruled out visitors too. Anyone calling in seems to think I'm "in the middle of something" and apologizes for intruding. In reality, the vacuum cleaner is on the floor because I only had time to clean one room two days ago and I haven't yet had the opportunity to do the adjoining one.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to live in a more orderly, ready for our close-up kind of way, but superwoman I am not and I can only do what I can do.

I think even more than parenting in general, single-income parenting — where the one adult in the house has to do everything — creates the need for giving yourself some sort of break. I relax on the housework. Please don't drop in.