Only another three days to go. Another three days before I can – hopefully – enjoy a day of relative calm and contentment.

A little over a decade ago, when I wheeled my daughters around in their double pushchair and watched them smile up at me, I could not have imagined a day when they would face me with a wilful look and scream “I hate you!”

Neither could I have imagined a day when I would stand red-faced in front of them and yell: “You’re horrible, lazy, selfish brats!”

But, I’m sad to say, that day came and others followed, and they are still coming.

Being a mother isn’t a picnic. It is exhausting and exasperating. I must use the same words thousands of times every week: “Turn that off, be quiet, stop bickering, do your homework, go to bed, pick that up, don’t be cheeky, don’t be rude.”

Of course, there are times when they are genuinely nice girls, although even on these occasions, household chores are not part of their timetable.

I’m ashamed to say that my children rarely make their beds – if they do, they make a pig’s ear out of it – or wash up and even grumble about clearing the table. “I can’t carry those plates through to the kitchen, I might drop them,” came the latest laughable excuse from my youngest.

That’s why I’m looking forward to Sunday. I’m going to exploit Mother’s Day to kick off a plan to turn my daughters into domestic goddesses.

Of course on that day they will be sweetness and light, presenting me with breakfast in bed, with a customary little posy from the garden.

They will probably be so nice that I will feel guilty about having shouted at them and confiscating their phones the night before.

But I’m going to be strong and implement my new regime, starting with a lesson from my husband who also has to tow the line in bed making on Mother’s Day – he claims to be the expert after years at boarding school.

Then it will be on to the kitchen where I will instruct them in the art of washing-up.

A spot of vacuuming, an hour of cleaning – with emphasis on the shower, which they use daily but never clean – and instructions on how to find the laundry basket, will follow.

I suspect they will humour me and pretend to enjoy these tasks assuming them to be for just one day.

Only at the end of the day I will unveil a timetable for them to follow until Mothering Sunday 2011, when I will score both of them out of 10 and give the winner her mobile phone back.