I HAVE no idea what we are having for dinner tonight.

It may be stir-fry, or curry, or possibly fish fingers and oven chips.

I will, as usual, ring my husband and ask him what we have got in the fridge, before heading to the supermarket. I am not alone. One in five of us don’t know what we will be cooking most days, according to a study that exposes the domestic chaos of many families.

That term accurately sums up the way my husband and I live. My home is in a permanently dishevelled state. There are always pots to be washed - we don’t have a dishwasher - and piles of laundry to be ironed.

There’s an ironing board permanently stationed in the living room, something inherited from my student days which I did not think would move with me into the 21st century. But there’s always so much laundry, and we don’t have a utility room.

We have a cat litter tray in an inconvenient place, but there is nowhere else to put it, and cat bowls in two different spots to prevent one cat attacking the other.

It’s far from ideal, and, however hard I try, it never seems to get any better.

The research, by a domestic appliances company, found that two-thirds of the 2,000 people questioned said they would be embarrassed if unexpected guests popped round as their homes are a mess.

This happened to me recently, when a neighbour called. I had to make a split-second decision as to whether to keep him talking outside or risk the living room, which had not been touched since the night before.

I knew the ironing board was up and the laundry basket was overflowing. I also knew that the stove had not been cleaned out and that I’d have to move piles of newspapers from the sofa. But I could not for the life of me remember whether I had removed the empty wine bottle, glasses and crumb-covered plates from the night before.

Knowing he would be at my home for a while, I decided to bite to bullet and admit him. Thankfully, last night’s detritus had gone, but the laundry had to be hastily shoved behind the door and newspapers swept aside to enable him to sit down.

I had to accept that he would witness the squalor, and did not even attempt to explain the plastic sacks stretched across the chair arms (to deter the cats from scratching).

Keeping an orderly house is, for me, the stuff of dreams. A recent visit to my daughter’s student house brought the comment from her that “It’s far cleaner and tidier than yours.”

Nearly two-thirds of people questioned in the survey admitted they regularly have to rewash clothes because they forget to take them out of the washing machine. Been there, done that, still doing it.

And just over half admitted they don’t plan ahead, while 40 per cent of those who do said they felt they made no inroads on their to-do lists, leaving them feeling unsettled.

I have a to-do list, stuck on a kitchen cupboard. At the moment it has about 15 things on it, most of which have been on it for more than a month. The problem is, every day, other, more urgent things come up, which shunts everything else back down.

Nearly a third of those surveyed said the reason their lives are so chaotic is because they are juggling too much. I work part-time, yet still can’t fit everything in.

Commenting on the study, University of Oxford psychology researcher Professor Robin Murphy suggested ‘smart home’ technology - devices controlled our phones - might be the answer.

Really? I can’t see that hanging out the washing or cleaning out cat litter trays.