If you'll allow me to reminisce for a minute: My Mom kept (keeps) an incredibly clean house. Not in a creepy cover-everything-with-plastic-wrap kind of way, thankfully, but clean enough. For years she enjoyed the privilege that I aspire to achieve sooner rather than later: she was a stay at home Mom, and I remember harbouring a particular reverse snobbery about housecleaning, and those who had it done for them.
I also remember being shocked - Shocked, even - when Mom pooh-poohed my teenage snobbery, because I assumed she would share it. She told me that if I could ever afford housecleaning to jump at it, because having someone else do things like clean toilets and mop floors would not only ensure that they'd actually get done on a regular basis, but that I'd have more time to take on bigger projects, or just enjoy spending time with my kids.
Consider me corrected, and happily so.
But my problem is this: I don't want anyone who cleans my house to think that I NEED them to clean my house.
Translation: I'm almost irresistibly tempted to clean my house before she comes to clean it for me. Again.
So doesn't it serve me, my old snobbery, and my crazy pride in my non-existent housewifery skills right that the woman hired by my brother-in-law came by on Very Short Notice this morning to scope out the place, on a day when there were (many) crumbs in the carpet, a pink ring in my shower,a disturbing stickiness on my kitchen floor, laundry clean but unfolded and decidedly un-put-away on top of my dryer, my hair was air dried and therefore bushier than Hermione Granger's, and my face was as free of makeup as - thankfully - my three-year-old's.
Oh yes, and I was also wearing a baggy t-shirt with spit-up and - I think - goat cheese smeared across the front.
That woman's going to charge double, I can just tell. Good thing I'm not paying for it.
This time last year: The $34,27 Wrap-up: Two Weeks Of Pantry, Freezer, And Leftover Eating
