What is it like to be a woman with five men plus a dog?

Dear Claudia, what's it like being the only female in a household of 5 men plus a male dog?

Florina Schwander, Editor

Dear Florina, it's great. I get a coffee in bed every day and am carried on ten hands. Well, almost. The only one who is constantly at my feet is of course our dog Floyd. But if I'm honest, he's actually at the feet of anyone who lets him.

The rest of my big family actually does what it wants. Yes, this big, wonderful we. You, Florina, ordered a text from me about my big family and my five, er, six men. Because I have a big family with an almost unnatural number of males. But I don't get round to writing large family texts for days on end because I have a large family with lots of men. That pretty much sums up the problem.

Because my dear, funny, generous and great men not only produce appointments like a medium-sized company, they also produce an incredible amount of dirt. And I'm not talking about the three daily washing machines, toothpaste residue in the sink, poorly hung towels, smelly socks, even smellier sportswear or the prints of muddy dog paws on the parquet floor.

I'm talking about the other family messes. Drawings and handicrafts lying around unfinished, pens that are put down somewhere after use, hats, gloves, shirts, jumpers lying around on chairs, the floor and beds, school information on paper waiting to be hung up by a compassionate soul and noted in the diary.

Not to mention the 50 empty children's chocolate wrappers from the Advent calendar that were recently found hidden between the sofa cushions during a cleaning session. And the tangerines that will be hibernating in a drawer in the children's room until March.

Do you know what I mean? Wonderful, then we're in the same boat. This morning, for example, I found the following scene: a shirt over the dining chair, five open Donald Duck books on the sofa, a teenage book on the console in the dining room, a Monopoly playing card on the coffee table, ten Lego bricks, aluminium foil on the office shelf, a baby present for a friend torn out of the box, four pairs of shoes in the hallway, a lonely toilet roll on the toilet roll holder and two empty shampoo bottles in the shower.

Various gift ribbons on the floor. Sheer horror for someone like me who subscribes to an estimated fifty minimalist design blogs!

After all, among the items discovered during the daily «Kondo» tidying up were some that my five flatmates had previously stubbornly denied having been misappropriated.

These included a sorely missed remote control and an uber-cool T-shirt I bought a few weeks ago, which disappeared after a single wash, only to spend the rest of its miserable existence crumpled up in the darkness of the children's wardrobe (so much for help around the house!).

Even the younger children are by no means free of talent when it comes to hoarding various other people's objects and the associated reluctance to tidy up. A few days ago, I even found the missing valve from the football pump, a ten-franc note, a forgotten drawing for Mother's Day and a typical birthday party give-away bag with sweets inside.

More precisely: what used to be sugar bombs. Because when I found them, they were already in a state of decay. Much like the empty yoghurt pots in my fifteen-year-old brother's room.

Four boys, also means: the fridge is always empty!

Which brings us to the topic of food. Four boys, that means: permanent holes in the fridge. One of my sons has grown 12 - in words: twelve! - centimetres in the last six months. This can only be compensated for by a constant intake of calories.

They also like to eat at times when normal people sleep during the week. It's normal to get a little hungry at 11.30pm and ravage the kitchen or polish off the sugo intended for tomorrow.

This in turn leads to empty pans, cutlery, plates or glasses being forgotten and a kind of in-house bacteria culture being created. This is allegedly done with the noble intention of not waking up other people living in the same household (isn't that called irrationality of pubertal foresight?).

I think it's much more likely that adolescents don't really wake up to go to the toilet or stagger to the fridge even after fourteen hours of continuous sleep. This is the only way to explain the fact that the rubbish they produce cannot be cleared away themselves.

And it's always there on Sundays: coffee in bed

Somehow I can understand it. I would also prefer not to be burdened with the horrors of civilisation before nine in the morning. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work out - with the exception of Sundays, when one of my younger children actually brings me the coffee my husband has kindly prepared to bed, gives me a really lovely, heartfelt kiss on the lips and immediately devotes himself to the big and very urgent questions of life that need to be discussed with me NOW.

Of course, I have to clear the coffee glass myself. The fact that tidiness is half the battle is not only grossly disregarded on a daily basis in a large family with five men, regardless of a clearly defined schedule of duties and tasks (see photo above), but also just as often disproved.

My wish for the house to be restored to the happy state it was in when I last moved in ten years ago is met with a roll of the eyes from everyone involved. And a look as if I was raving about how responsible this girl from the parallel class was, top of her class in Latin, an enthusiastic clarinet player to boot and so, so, so nice to her pets, the fish.