I’m flat on my stomach in the bathroom, my nose pressed against the floor drain. There’s been an elusive smell in here for months. It can’t be the toilet, as I’ve already bombed it with chemicals. You’re aware of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction? People say they never existed, but I’ve recently sourced them all from Bunnings.

I assume they worked. And, if it’s not the toilet, it must be the floor drain. I have a feeling it’s not connected to any pipes. It’s just a portal into the underworld. I lie on my belly, sniffing like a truffle hound, but nothing. Give it another half-hour of pointless sniffing, and I may have worked up enough energy to stand up.

We’ve lived with the weird smell for months, so why the sudden flurry of activity? Christmas, of course. Guests from overseas are coming to stay. It’s my eldest son and his family. Do nothing and they will realise we live like pigs in our own filth. And so the great clean-up begins.

First off will be the toughest jobs. But how do you rank the Worst Household Tasks of All Time?

The worst occupation, of course, is trying to identify a weird smell in your bathroom. First, it involves getting down on your belly. Next, it involves sniffing heartily in the hope of smelling something bad. Finally, you always fail to achieve a solution.

I prop open the window in the bathroom, hoping that might make a difference, and move onto the second-worst job. This involves changing the sheets on the bed in the main bedroom. We’re good people! We always give guests the main room with the king bed. But why is it called a “king”? It’s because the only people who buy them should be actual royals with an extensive domestic staff.

It’s late in the day to attempt to convince my son that his father isn’t an idiot, but it’s worth a try.

Otherwise, you are the one who has to get the washed doona cover back onto the doona. It’s not a queen, that’s easy. It’s not a double, which is the work of seconds. No, this is the real deal. It’s a king, and the particular king, I’m guessing, is Henry VIII. The thing is so huge. So I pull the doona cover inside out, then climb into it, grasping the doona itself though the fabric, then dance around like a ghost having a seizure.

I pull the doona into the cover, dance around some more, and then flick it onto the bed. It never quite works, and so I have to crawl back inside the cover, trying to push one end into one corner without disturbing the other corner I managed to get right. Chance of success: nil.