The six-minute clean-up

Nick Hornby's books could be insufferably smug, but I read them for many years because they had occasional moments of universal insight - like when he talks about the therapeutic aspects of sorting out the record collection, or the parts in Fever Pitch where the narrator relates just how hard it is to be a professional sportsperson

One that always resonated with me was the allotments of time used by the main character in About A Boy. Will is independently wealthy, but doesn't need a job to keep busy, because he slots the day into specific moments of time. One unit for watching something on TV, another two for preparing a good meal, several units on an excursion into the outside world.

I always did this, even if I've never been a true gentleman of leisure like Will. I still do it now, breaking the day down into little increments, just enough to accomplish certain tasks around the house, and after years of experimentation, I've got it down to a fine art.

The thing is, there are currently two pre-schoolers in the house, and they are messy as fuck. There are toy cars and fairy statues and building blocks everywhere, and I have to clean them up every single day, while also pulling my share of general household chores like making the bed, or doing the dishes, or getting out the vacuum cleaner.

It's a goddamn huge task, and doing it constantly makes it feel insurmountable, unless I break it up into tiny moments of time, and make specific time to do something fun like read a comic book.

For many, many years, I would do the housework to music, cleaning up for one song, then taking a break and reading something for every other song. Pulp's Common People album was perfect, but if I had a playlist, I would ensure that it was organised by the length of songs, so there was an equal amount of work and play.

Now, after rigorous testing, I've come to the conclusion that you need something longer than the standard length of a pop song, even one by Cokcer and chums, and have settled on six minutes.

Six minutes is the perfect amount of time to get one housework task done, and the perfect amount of time to take a break from it. I can read slightly more than one issue of a standard American comic book in those six minutes, or read 10 pages of a Doctor Who New Adventures book. I can make big in-roads into thousand-page novels, one bit at a time.

It's an obviously disjointed way of consuming some fine entertainment, but it really does help, keeping the floor clear of kids toys, while indulging in some quiet reading. You can get a lot done in six minutes, when it all adds up.