Clean up time is here today

I’m so excited right now. As I type this someone is in my house.

Cleaning.

Yup, three months after heading back to work, we gave in and hired a cleaning woman.

When I first returned to work, we figured we’d try it out and see how we managed. Well three months later, I can honestly say we didn’t manage very well. Maybe we didn’t really make an effort at it, since our fall back plan was always “well if it doesn’t work out we’ll hire a cleaning woman.” So, when you know your fall back plan is to do what you wanted to do in the first place, why try very hard at making the so-called Plan A work?

I’m sure we could have managed to keep our house clean if we really tried. I mean how hard is it to mop the floors, clean the bathrooms and kitchen and vacuum the basement? Pretty hard really, when you’d rather spend time hanging out with your toddler on a Saturday morning. And even if we’re not lazing about with Austin, but getting stuff done (like running errands with him in tow) we’re still ‘hanging out’ with him and not dumping him in front of the TV to scrub the bathroom and dust the shelves.

But it can get expensive having someone else do the work for you, so here’s the compromise we made with ourselves – once a month, we’ll have someone else come in and give our house a good clean. In between, we’re perfectly capable of sweeping up and doing other minor cleaning here and there.

Now all I have to do to best make this arrangement work is to plan to have people over soon after she cleans and not soon before – because that means I’ll have to do it!