**Housekeeping Superstars Post**

This my lovelies, is the bath to take when it seems as though the whole world is against you and you are oozing bruised and bad feelings out of every pore. You know, one of those days…

Melissa is a particularly spiritual oil, highly regarded as being blessed with the ability to soothe emotional pain, cleanse damaged auras and sedate jangly, troubled nerves. The idea with this bath is to restore a sense of order and well-being, while soothing your soul and reminding you just what is beautiful about this life…

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This is a Housekeeping Superstar post. In order to access it, you need to be a member of our Superstar Salon. Learn more about Housekeeping Superstardom here…  

“THERE persists much of the harem in every well-regulated home. In every house arranged to make a real man really happy, that man remains always a visitor, welcomed, honored, but perpetually a guest. He steps in from the great outside for rest and refreshment, but he never belongs. For him the click and hum of the harem machinery stops, giving way to love and laughter, but there is always feminine relief when the master departs and the household hum goes on again. The anomaly lies in the fact that in theory all the machinery exists but for the master’s comfort; but in practice, it is much easier to arrange for his comfort when he is not there. A house without a man is savorless, yet a man in a house is incarnate interruption.

No matter how closely he incarcerates himself, or how silently, a woman always feels him there. He may hide beyond five doors and two flights of stairs, but his presence somehow leaks through, and unconsciously dominates every domestic detail. He does not mean to, the woman does not mean him to; it is merely the nature of him. Keep a man at home during the working hours of the day, and there is a blight on that house, not obvious, but subtle, touching the mood and the manner of maidservant and manservant, cat, dog, and mistress, and affecting even the behavior of inanimate objects, so that there is a constraint about the sewing-machine, a palsy on the vacuum-cleaner, and a gaucherie in the stove-lids. Over the whole household spreads a feeling of the unnatural, and a resulting sense of ineffectuality. Let the man go out, and with the closing of the front door, the wheels grow brisk again, and smooth. To enjoy a home worth enjoying, a man should be in it as briefly as possible…”

The Joys of Being a Woman by Winifred Kirkland, 1918

Hello sweeties, just a short note to tell you that the new BrocanteHome Boutique and Affiliate program is now open for business (yay)! Both were in need of a major overhaul and that is exactly what I have given them!

I am so excited to be able to introduce the all-new Brocantehome Affiliate Network!

This then is your opportunity to share a piece of my utterly scrumptious Vintage housekeeping cake, by becoming an affiliate and earning 50% of every sale you refer to the BrocanteHome Boutique…

In the past twelve months my earnings from Brocantehome have rocketed and now I am eager to share this joy with you, my lovely readers by making an income from my store a very real possibility if you are willing to promote my planners, downloads, emails and Housekeeping Superstar Subscription program on your own blog, Twitter, Facebook or other social network…

So how does the Affiliate program work?

As an Affiliate for the BrocanteHome boutique you will earn a generous 50%of all sales made through your links. The process for becoming an affiliate is terribly simple and goes as follows…

1. First, you need to follow this link to register as Brocanteer…
2. then you will need to wait a short time for your application to be automatically approved.
3. Once you are logged in, you can select links and banners for your site from the “Creatives” section of the affiliate page.
4. then simply copy and paste the code into your website, or share your personalised link on the social network of your choice and watch the pennies start to roll in!

How do I sign up?

Simply click here to get to the Affiliate login and registration page. You will also need a Paypal account in order for your affiliate payments to be processed.

Your application will be automatically improved and you will receive an email confirming this.

Where do I access links and banners to post on my site?

To get links for specific pages and products on the site, log in to the Affiliate site and click on the “Creatives” tab on the top. Then, click on the link or banner you would like to use. Copy/paste the code into your website and share with your readers, and feel free to customize and create your own personalized banners, write blog posts or generate tweets…

When will I be paid?

You will be paid one month after your first sale by Paypal to your own Paypal account. There is no minimum payment, and I will pay commissions however large or small your balance is.

Ready to sign up??

Just click here to register and get busy promoting the BrocanteHome Boutique…

I’m so looking forward to working with you!

**Housekeeping Superstars Post**

Once upon a time there was a housekeeper, lets call her Alison, who lived in a happy little gingerbread cottage and spent her days wafting around her treasure filled rooms, filling drawers with comfort, lighting candles on every surface and opening tin cans with her teeth.

Oh yes. For dear Alison was too mean to spend money on a decent tin-opener. Or a pair of garden gloves that actually prevented rosy prickles from stabbing her delicate skin. Or a broom that didn’t scatter it’s bristles as she swept. Yes, she, the silly, vain little sweetheart, was of a fur coat, no knickers temperament and justified all the gaps in her domestic life by reassuring herself that one more pretty little tchoicke could more than make up for the hours spent in Casualty having her tin-opened fingers stitched back together…

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This is a Housekeeping Superstar post. In order to access it, you need to be a member of our Superstar Salon. Learn more about Housekeeping Superstardom here…  

Last night in a moment of madness, you decide to get into bed extra-ordinarily early to watch a film. This is such a bad idea on so many counts you don’t know where to start, but you carry the iPad up the stairs regardless and within fifteen minutes of enjoying a documentary about the benefits of a vegan diet, you are fast asleep. At one o’clock in the morning your eyes pop open and there you are wide awake and ready for the kind of action the rest of the world is too busy dreaming about to contemplate.

For a while you snuggle down in lavender scented bliss, entertaining new ideas for BrocanteHome and pondering the revelation that is Mighty Mature Dairylea, because work and cheese are the enduring loves of your life and clearly time to dwell on either is your own kind of bliss.

By now you are spread-eagled across the bed, one icy cold foot popping out the covers, and the rest of you sweltering under three layers of patchwork quilts. Boredom has set in. Apparently there is only so much mileage in thoughts about cheese, and deeper thought must be avoided if worries are to be kept at bay.

You switch the light on and read some of Martha Stewart’s new book, but Martha makes the most awful bed companion and all to soon you are flicking through the pages of the Daily Mail app, infuriating yourself as a kind of punishment for not being able to sleep. Outside the owl has started it’s middle of the night moaning, hoots that come in  screechy batches of four and will, you know, go on until the sun finally rises.

Soon you are counting in time with the owl.  Your own version of the dreaded dripping tap. You hear your son giggle in his sleep, the scratching of a kitten outraged by being locked in the laundry room, the cough of your next door neighbour. By now you can see around your bedroom clearly and in your mind you are moving the furniture, re-decorating, adding more floral portraits to the collection above the little oak chest discovered on the tip, and wondering how a teeny little bookcase could be fitted in.

The hours pass slowly. Your head starts to ache and at five o’clock your tummy bloats with tired air. You are cross now. Cross with everyone you know. Cross with a mattress that clearly needs replacing and cross with pillows that heat up too quickly and need turning over too often. Cross with your body for not behaving itself in the middle of the night and now cross with the local council who seem to think 6.30 is a good time to send the glass recycling van thundering down the road, clattering blue boxes full of glass at every house and holding merry conversation amongst themselves.

And then Finn is crawling into your bed and it is time to get up. You reassure him nightmares aren’t real. Tell him you will be downstairs in five minutes and fall promptly into the deep sleep you have begged the sandman to deliver all night long. You dream about an argument with someone you have never argued with. About slowly driving your first car to Mark’s parent’s house, and oddly about de-frosting your frost free freezer. And then your son is once again at your bedside, telling you that there is a green and white man knocking on the door and though this makes no sense at all, it isn’t a dream and it is half past eight and there isn’t a child washed in the house and there is indeed a green and white man knocking on your door.

You throw on a combination of heaven knows what and open the door to a boy in a fluorescent jacket who wants you to move your car so that roadworks can begin, apparently on your doorstep, so you run into the street in bare feet and shift the car and dash back into the house to shout at small child for having an irresponsible Mother and find yourself caught up in conversation with a boy clearly channeling his doppelganger from “Outnumbered” ….

“So what I’m hearing MUMMY, is you blaming me for you sleeping in?”

“No Sweetheart, I merely want you to help me by being quick getting ready and eating your breakfast, please..?”

 ”Sorry Mum, quick just ain’t my middle name”

You resist temptation to scream, run into kitchen to find neighbor standing in the back garden telling you to move the car you have already moved. Thank him and trip over kitten screeching for food. Swear. Deny swearing to child. Feed cat and child. Drag clothes on to child who has apparently forgotten how. Knock back cup of rocket fuel instant coffee. Deliver child to man standing on doorstep waiting to take him to school. Pretend to be normal human being. Smile and joke in relaxed fashion. Kiss child. Close door. Open it again to green and white man who wants you to move car again. Resist punching him in the head or breaking down in tears while telling him about your sleeping woes.

Make another cup of coffee. Switch on computer. Relax. Spread Dairylea on a fat free cracker. Resolve never to watch TV in bed again because clearly geopathic stress sends you around the bend.

Worry about being around the bend.

Well now, it is a rare occasion that I happen across something that has me wanting to schedule over-seas shipment, but when I saw this hand-painted, re-conditioned chest from the wonderful people at RedBarnEstates, for a moment or two I  seriously entertained the idea of having this lovely piece shipped over all the way from America, although I have absolutely nowhere it could live and not a single jot of blue, French or otherwise in the whole house…

I can’t be the only Housekeeper constantly in the process of decorating an imaginary chateau, now can I?

Well my pretty ones: it has been a long time coming, but the Housekeepers Superstar Salon is finally here: a dedicated, gorgeous, easy to navigate site exclusively for my lovely Housekeeping Superstars!

No longer will you lovely people have to hunt around for the downloads and exclusive Housekeeper content because I have gathered it all in one wonderful site, with forums, treats and a dedicated download space so you need never have problems accessing all the wonderful planners, systems and writing available absolutely free to you…

Invitations to access the site will start to go out this afternoon and it will probably take me a few days to get them out to everybody, so please be patient and remember that you can be involved in the Salon as little or as much as you like: just pop in there to grab this weeks cleaning recipe, read the blog or download 365 housekeeping, or create your page and chatter up a storm in the forums: it is entirely up to you. This is your space and I want you to use it as you see fit…

I truly hope you agree that this adds value to your Housekeeping Superstar subscription and I just can’t wait to meet and greet you inside our very own Superstar Salon…

Darlings, do excuse me if I disappear for a few days won’t you? I am working on something rather wonderful for my Housekeeping Superstars and need to throw my heart and soul into it…

Fingers crossed it will make life easier for all of us…

Have a nice weekend won’t you?

If ever you needed proof that I am not the infallible, perfect housekeeper I worry you think I might be, last night I went to bed leaving the laundry drying in the garden. Drying in the rain.

Oh yes. After a spectacularly sunny day, I popped the washing maiden out on to the decking while I mopped the laundry room floor and then I forgot about it and went inside to eat prawn salad and snuggle my tired babba and congratulate myself on finally releasing my other baby, Housekeeping 365 out into the world.

Readers I was feeling pretty smug. I was feeling so tired it hurt to touch my skin and so thrilled with myself I sat up till midnight watching John Bishop and seeing how high I could drop a grape into my mouth and catch it without sending it straight down my gullet and dying a horrible chokey death while Alice the kitten looked on and laughed.

But I digress. The issue here is the maiden full of laundry sitting on the decking. When I finally forced myself out of my armchair I switched off all the lights, popped Alice in to her polka dotty basket and closing the top of the stable door into the garden observed the maiden and decided then and there to do nothing about it. Yes readers I left it there on purpose, because I was high on life or stretching my domestic boundaries or feeling outrageously rebellious or something equally as daring or silly, and off I trotted to sleep the dead, wild sleep of the permanently exhausted.

This morning I woke up and spied through the curtains on the kind of grey, drizzly rain we British excel at. I got up and argued with Finn about why he would be wearing school shorts instead of trousers now we were into the summer term and made myself a stupidly strong coffee and then remembered about the maiden, so I popped my head out of the kitchen window and looked upon a teeny yard without a maiden in sight.

For a moment I thought I was having housekeepery hallucinations and then I convinced myself that this was the universe’s penance for being slovenly, but by the time I had shoved my feet into a pair of cherry red gardening clogs and dashed into the garden I discovered that the maiden had not been spirited away for punishment but had in fact being neatly moved to near the garden gate.

Who would do such a thing? Who?? Who?

I stood scratching my head weighing up the likely candidates.

Back in the 1970′s some naughty man would regularly steal knickers off my Mum’s washing line, but nowadays perverts can indulge in much more sordid past times and the likelihood of some passing weirdo nipping down the communal path of our Victorian quartered gardens struck me as highly unlikely seen as my large black undergarments would better serve as parachutes, then fodder for fantasy. So I ruled out a pervert in an instant.

Then there was the neighbors  A couple of pensionable age on my left, and a single mother and a single father to my right. Never having known any of them to organize my washing in the fourteen years I have lived here, I simply cannot fathom why they would take it into their heads to enter my garden and re-arrange my domestic doings.

Finally I had to consider the possibility of a particularly neat burglar, moving the maiden out of the way so he could case the joint and quickly establish that I live in Fort Knox and own a rather ferocious black kitten of the sort medieval witches were known to harbor  It was a possibility but would such a naughty criminal take the time to re-arrange the laundry? For yes indeed, Finn’s skeleton onesie was arranged in a manner that I, Queen of the Laundry, would simply never contemplate.

Heavens to Betsy, if it isn’t the kind of mystery that could keep Agatha Raisin cursing snakes and bastards for the rest of her lifetime, then I don’t know what it is.

In the end I put it down to particularly meddlesome housekeeping pixies or the cheeky gnome swinging from the new shed, shoved the wet laundry back into the  washing machine and resolved never to rebel against my inner housewife again. From now on I will string a line across the kitchen and behave myself.

Let me be a lesson to you m’dears.

And finally the day drew to an end and Rich pulled out all the stops and Housekeeping 365 was finally born! So I wanted to share a few notes with you about the program and to let you know how I will be using it here on Brocantehome…

1. If you are going to be using the online editable version, you will need to download Adobe Reader here…

2. If you are instead choosing to use the printable version, please be aware that it is a huuuuuge file and it may be sensible to download one week at a time, instead of printing the entire file at once…

3. Housekeeping 365 is perfect for allocating chores to various different members of the family: simply print out a page each and highlight the tasks required….

4. Don’t get carried away: the tasks are suggestions only, and though you would have quite the most darling of households were you to complete all 5110 tasks throughout the year I do believe you would also be exhausted, so pace yourself, and do as much or as little as your energy levels and schedule require…

5. Remember to note down all the other tasks you do each week in the boxes at the end of the week so over the year you will get a truer picture of exactly what you have achieved…

6. I will be explaining some of the special afternoon tasks in my Housekeeping Superstar posts, starting tomorrow with specific instructions for the “Blitz and Prettify” process…

and finally: the big news….

7. I have created an email program for the Housekeeping 365 system, delivering each days task list directly to your in-box. Housekeeping Superstars can access the email program in the Housekeepers Salon and everyone else can find out more about Housekeeping 365 Email here…

I do hope you enjoy Housekeeping 365 and more than that find it useful… I, my Darlings am off to plunge my worn out self into a geranium scented bath….

Sweet dreams.x