I’ve had to hide the chocolates, but this is nothing to do with diet-related new year resolutions.

Now the schools are back, I can’t possibly leave the house littered with boxes of confectionery given to us at Christmas. The place looks like the production line at Nestle and I don’t want the kids to come home while we are at work, and chomp their way through seven boxes of Matchmakers, two Chocolate Oranges and a Toblerone the size of a telegraph pole.

So they’ve been taken out of circulation, to be rationed as I see fit. Rationing may be something we left behind decades ago, and which many of us haven’t ever experienced, but in these times of consumer excess, I feel more and more that we should bring it back.

I realise that that’s not going to happen on a national scale, so the best I can do is introduce it at a local scale, and a very local scale at that – within my home.

These are the things I’d like to see rationed in 2013:

  • Mobile phone use: Not for emergencies, of course – that’s the main reason I have one and I like to know I can harass my children at the flick of a button.

But I’m sick of trying to conduct a conversation with someone – notably my eldest daughter – who is unable to look up from their phone, and who carries on texting as we talk.

  • Facebook: For similar reasons, this should be used in moderation, not every time you go anywhere or do anything. I’m depressed every time I hear about a friend joining Facebook.

My sister, who always spoke out against it, is a massive convert, virtually mapping her life out on it. I find myself competing with it for her time. Her addiction is such that I am starting a campaign to get her off it.

  • Rubbish on TV: My youngest daughter lives on a diet of TV drivel. She laps up programmes featuring the Kardashians, Peter Andre, and anyone with blonde hair and a spray tan from Essex.

Instead of constantly lecturing her that ‘real life isn’t like that’, I’m going to switch off, and insist she watches only bite-sized chunks among a regular diet of ground-breaking science and history documentaries.