"The 19 things I didn’t realise my children could destroy (mostly with their bare hands)."

As a parent, I spend way more time cleaning and tidying than I ever did before I had Children.

In fact, the average mother spends more than a month out of every year cleaning. Yet anyone visiting my house would assume it had been rented out to a flock of feral goats.

Children are, to put it bluntly, weapons of mass destruction. They destroy things that are expensive. They destroy things that are irreplaceable. They destroy things you thought were unbreakable. Nothing is safe.

Here is a brief list of some of the things my children have destroyed.

1. The back door. My daughter decided to scratch a heart into the wood, along with her name and mine. Terrible… or terribly cute. Haven’t quite decided.

2. The carpet in the dining room. I can identify the stains: the tub of tomato paste my son elbowed onto the ground, the bowl of yoghurt that landed upside down, the glass of red wine that got knocked over. Ah, memories.

3. The bathroom cabinet. Slightly warped after my son played too many games of “tidal wave” in a very full bath.

4. My boobs. That’s okay. They got plenty of use.

5. The wooden floor in the living room. I loved the look of floorboards until I had to try to clean vomit out of the tiny gaps between them.

6. The carpet in the study. My daughter scribbled on it with permanent marker while I was in the middle of a work-related phone call. Permanent really does mean permanent, apparently.

7. My memory. I think my forgetfulness is due to a decade of interrupted sleep, but it could also be due to the wine I consumed in the decade before that.

8. Enough books to fill a small library. My daughter ripped through books. My son literally ate them up.

9. My handmade wooden jewellery box and jewellery. It was never quite the same after the “pirates” buried it in the backyard.

10. The front screen door. It now has a hole big enough to let through not only insects but possibly even a very determined Chihuahua.

11. The soles of my feet. Yes, Lego hurts, but so do dinosaurs and miniature earthmoving vehicles.

12. The bedroom wall. Peeling off paint is irresistible, isn’t it?

13. The video recorder. The slot is just the right size for a sandwich made with KRAFT SINGLES cheese. But hey – who watches videos anymore?

14. My social life. But I’m sure, in another decade or so, I’ll pick up right where I left off.

15. The tomato plants. One single, misguided burst of enthusiasm for pulling up “weeds” and they were gone.

16. The glass door on the cabinet in the living room. Can’t go into details. Still traumatised.

17. Child-proof locks. You know those strap-like ones you stick onto fridges to stop kids opening them? They didn’t stop my kids from getting their hands onto the eggs, and the chocolate, and the milk…

18. The bedroom curtains and curtain rods. Yes, you can swing on them like Tarzan swinging on a vine. Once only, though.

19. My bank balance. But my kids are worth every cent.

Who wouldn’t want someone to come in and clean up some of the mess their kids have made? Well, now you have the chance to win a cleaner for a year.

All you have to do is buy two DAIRYLEA or KRAFT SINGLES products and enter via the competition website. There are 10 cleaners to be won.

Just think of all the extra free time you’d have to do the things you really want to do, whatever they may be. Let’s face it: almost everything is more fun than cleaning.

What have your kids destroyed?