All I said was: "It would be nice to get the shelves up tomorrow." But my husband detected a hint of criticism in my voice and immediately raised his own.

"All right, all right. I'm doing my best."

"I was just saying ... " I continued. But my husband walked off in a huff and put his bike back in the shed.

He had spent the day enjoying himself on a long cycle ride round around Sussex and now clearly felt guilty he hadn't been attending to domestic chores.

I hadn't meant to sound critical.

He rarely gets time off to do something completely selfish and I recognise this is something we're all entitled to once in a while.

When you become a parent, it's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have to spend every second of the day trying to improve life for your family.

Your own interests have to take second or third or sometimes even fourth place (in my experience, the central heating boiler comes higher up the pecking order than me).

But on this particular day, after having a hard time of it at work myself, I just felt a little disappointed that he'd had hours and hours to himself all day (the kids were at school/in childcare), and the ironing was still piled high.

"You know, you should get out more," he said later, as I began sorting the crumpled clothes into individual mounds to make it look more manageable.

"You could take a day off and go to see your friends or visit an exhibition or spend a day in at health spa. It would do you good."

"Can't," I said, spitting at the iron.

"Too much to do all the time. If I were to take a day off, I'd only have twice as much to do the next."

"Does that matter?" he said. "I mean, couldn't we just catch up gradually?"

"We can't keep on top of things as it is," I moaned. "We would never be able to catch up."

"So don't try," he reasoned. "Why don't we just accept our limitations and live with what we have?"

Ah, if only. I envy people who are more relaxed about their environment, who can ignore scuffed wallpaper and indelible stains on the carpet, who don't mind the stair balustrades still need a coat of eggshell, who have no complaints about dandelions taking root in their lawns, who are happy to have unassembled Ikea shelves stored under the bed indefinitely.

Everywhere I look I see jobs crying out to be done.

I have to avert my eyes every time I walk up our garden path because the sight of the peeling paint on our front door is too upsetting.

Sadly, I have inherited my mother's tidy gene.

She will work from dawn until 3am keeping her house clean and tidy and is super-critical of anyone whose home harbours a nanospec of dust.

She has even been known to scrub the bath while you are still in it.

I'd like to think my behaviour is less extreme but that's probably only because I don't get the chance to be an obsessive.

All I can do is obsess about my lack of opportunity. And there's nothing more depressing than an underachieving obsessive.