Cleaning for the Cleaning Lady

Its 9:00 pm and I need to start cleaning for the cleaning lady. What I really want to do is go to bed. But I can't. I've hired someone to help me clean so now I have to clean for her.

We'd had a cleaning person years ago. At first I loved it. I found it a necessity. I didn't know how I'd been able to get along without her.

As time went on she did a worse and worse job. She was very nice. She needed money. But when "I" cleaned I did a far superior job. I move furniture, I roll up rugs, I get into corners and crevices. I REALLY clean. She dusted the main areas. She did a bad job mopping. I paid her to do that. One day I realized that I should not pay someone to do a bad job. Even if the person is nice. Besides, the various therapies needed for special needs kids aren't exactly free. Here we are struggling to make ends meet and I'm paying someone to do a terrible job cleaning. Plus the fact remained that I , in fact, was still doing a lot of cleaning. The majority of our mess is clutter. Kid clutter. Clean laundry doesn't get put away. Toys get dumped and half of them get put away. There is always a stray Lego I can step on in the middle of the night. Those little plastic butterflies that belong in the Elefun box are under every chair and sofa in this house. Rolled up dirty socks end up in toy bins ( not what I meant when I asked someone to put the mess away). Piles of artwork remain on the bench by the front door. Bits of Play Doh are squished into the rug. DVDs are removed from the DVD player and left in scratched batches in the vicinity of the TV. Broken crayons are abandoned on the sofa. Cups are under the sofa. Rejected shirt choices are left crumpled on the floor. Oliver alone uses 10,000 Dixie Cups per day and leaves each cup on the bathroom counter, in a neat line.

So I let the housekeeper go.

For a while I had my routine. Two older boys go to school, twins nap. I vacuum as soon as I put them down, they get lulled to sleep by the vacuum, then I mop. Simple. I'll just do that everyday. It worked for months. But it all fell apart when the twins decided not to nap in the early morning. My routine was ruined. The house fell apart. I tried to pick up with them underfoot but they dumped buckets of toys and fought and fell down and beat on one another. I tried to vacuum but they would pull on the cord and run in front of the vacuum ( aren't toddlers supposed to be afraid of the vacuum?). I tried to mop while they grabbed dishes out of the dishwasher and tried to drink the mop water. Our house got messier and messier. I tried to clean on the weekend. I tried to get Jeff to take the kids outside. 20 minutes doesn't cut it. The floors became more and more disgusting. I became less and less happy.

Holden did not have playdates because I could never get it together to have the house in a state where people might be comfortable allowing their child to play. I didn't want to have to ask if children were updated on their shots prior to a playdate. By the end of the year Holden had about 3 playdates.. and I felt horrible. Had it really been a year of feeling like I couldn't catch up? A year of thinking I'll be able to catch up soon? A year of cleaning while messes were created in my wake? Messes so large and extreme that I couldn't cope?

I emailed around asking about housekeepers. I didn't call any of them. How can we afford a housekeeper on top of therapies etc? But this house makes me miserable.

Finally I called a woman whose name I can't pronounce. We set up a date. I asked her rate but she couldn't say until she saw our house. She arrived on time. I , of course, was late.

I think she was horrified. I'd picked up, or I'd tried to.

At 2:30 pm she started cleaning. I had the kids in the playroom. She was in the kitchen. At 5:30 pm... she was in the kitchen. OK, the kitchen looked amazing, but um... how long would she be here? I started getting nervous about her rate. I asked again , but she still didn't know. OK, a little odd, but whatever.

She moved into the living room. She rolled up the rug. She moved furniture. She did everything that I would have done if I didn't have 4 urchins trailing me.

At 6:00 pm Jeff went out to pick up burritos. We set the table outside. She was still cleaning. The kids ate dinner. They had Popsicles. 2 Popsicles. Jeff asked what her rate was. She didn't know. Jeff surmised that maybe she needed to go into a zen state to figure it out.

At 6:30 we told her to clean the bathroom and call it a day. She never got to the kid's rooms. The price had come to her. Double my ex cleaning person but she'd been here 4x as long. She needed to charge extra for picking up. We always have toys everywhere. She'd charge a little more next time since she'd be doing all of the rooms.

So now I want to get everything put away before she arrives. I don't want that extra mess surcharge we accrued last time. Of course its impossible to get it all put away because " it" doesn't go anywhere. We are crammed into a 1200 sq ft house with 4 kids, 2 cats and the fish.

I secretly resent the fish for taking up more than their share in terms of the footprint of this house when compared to body mass.

Maybe I'll hide everything in the oven.