A Present I Give Myself...Every Other Week

After years of holding off, saving, grumbling, sweating and working ourselves, we finally decided that we should get a house cleaner.

Housekeeper, house cleaner, maid service, whatever you want to call it, we finally gave in.

It was fortuitous that a neighbor of ours left us a message on our voice mail one day recommending her cleaning lady to us the same week Wayne and I had been saying that perhaps it was finally time. After all, we had once upon a time said we would get one when we had kids. We had one child, and we continued to clean our own house. Not that big of a deal then.

Then...we had kid two. One infant and one toddler, and two professionals working our respective jobs. This is a bit more work, and perhaps a housekeeper would be in order. But no, we said, they are all so expensive and we'd rather take that money and put it into college funds than spend it to have a clean house.

Then...this year we finally began spending LESS money on daycare expenses, now that Lindsey is in school all day. Hmmm....might be some money in the budget.

So we finally decided to get a housekeeper, and I cannot say how much I LOVE it!

Every other week, it's like a gift one night that week when I walk into the house. The carpets have been vaccuumed, the furniture dusted, countertops bleached, toilets scrubbed, floors mopped, and always a surprise cleaning item every time.

We use the lady that our neighbor recommended and she does a great job. She says for us to just leave notes about whatever special thing we'd like cleaned the next time, and she'll do it. A while ago I left her a note and asked her to clean the ceiling fans, which were literally black on the edges with built up dust from running all summer. Not only did she clean them of dust, but she actually got something like 10 years worth of built up black grease off of the ceiling fan in our kitchen. I had tackled that fan several times myself, and while I could reduce the dust build up, I could not get them un-blackened. That fan was spotless when we came home. It looked like a brand new fan.

Today we come home and she's cleaned and conditioned all of our leather furniture as I had asked. I hadn't realized how dirty they were until she cleaned them. No drips of apple juice on them, no dribbles of drool from the dog. We can actually have company over and not be ashamed to offer them a chair.

She makes up the girls' beds and folds their blankies so sweetly on their beds. She readjusts our furniture and occasionally the items on our countertop, which I find amusing. (Because all I'm going to do is put them back the way I want them anyway, but at least I know she moved everything and cleaned underneath them, which is why I think she doesn't put them back where they started.)

A side benefit is that every other week we have to pick up the house before she comes to clean. Items get put away that wouldn't have been put away, we purge things that are sitting around aimlessly, missing their eventual home in the circular file, and the girls chip in to clean up their rooms. Marissa even made her own bed this morning and offered to make Lindsey's too.

I am so grateful that we are in a position to be able to hire a cleaning lady. It is like a gift I give myself every time she shows up.