Mornin’!
Yesterday I spent the first afternoon of the new year cleaning my room. It took HOURS. Admittedly, it was no Collyer brothers situation, but there was still a lot of reorganising, putting away and dusting going on. Incidentally, how horrific must the second brother’s death have been? Blind, hearing what happened and being trapped? I first read about these guys when we were up on the Gold Coast visiting my grandparents when I was 15 and was old enough to start reading their books. That summer I first read ‘A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, (ironically, while sunbathing on the beach), and ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ which was about the Collyer brothers. What a summer of bliss. Anyway, my room is now homogenised, sanitised and reorganised, so the new year can begin!!
This year I’m going part-time at work, though the way the timetable has worked out it still means I’m going to be there 5 days a week… I just have Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings off. (I’ll be teaching a double period of year 7 English Friday afternoons… can you imagine how much I’ll be looking forward to coming back in for that each week?) The thermomix business needs more time for me to throw at it so I’ve taken the extra ‘day’ to be able to do the bookwork, run around and see people I need to, attend meetings and also get more things done around here. I’ve discovered that a veggie garden needs more attention than mine has been getting, and waiting till the summer holidays to do things means that there’s not much to harvest. Oops.
I’m also going to be hiring a cleaner.
I know!!!!!!
I’m freaking out a little bit about it. Well, ok… a lot. I still feel that with 5 able-bodied adults in the house we should be able to keep this place in a state resembling “Fit For Human Habitation” status. Apparently we can’t. The boys are fabulous in every other regard. They’re no trouble, they do the right thing and they don’t cause me an instant’s worry. (I hope I haven’t put the mozz on myself… I just knocked on wood.) However, they seem to be incapable of initiating any household chore themselves. Sink full of dishes? Just keep piling them up! Clothes need washing? Just leave them on your floor or throw them in the laundry. They’ll get done somehow! Lawn need mowing? I’ll get to it after this game. Or tomorrow…!
I’ve been away from home a lot this past year and I’m tired of coming home and acting like a witch when I walk through the door at the end of a loooong day and little or nothing has been done. As I said, they’re such good kids in every other way and I’m starting to feel like they’ll be dreading to hear the sound of my key in the door. So in the big scheme of things I think I have to do something to promote harmony, so I’m going to outsource. Weird because before I went back to teaching I myself was a cleaner (and a damned good one. People were very unhappy when I quit to go back to teaching) so the wheel has come full circle. The housework is doing my head in, plus I really hate doing it, so I’m looking for a cleaner as soon as I tidy the laundry up. I figure the best benefit from having one is that the day before she comes we’ll all tidy up so that she can actually clean. I used to have cleaning jobs where they’d hire me for 3 hours and the first hour and a half I’d simply be putting things away. I could never understand that because it seemed like a huge waste of money to me.
I realise that I’m starting to look forward to the prospect of having an ordered space to come home to, though I’m still dragging my feet about actually contacting anyone to start. The whole ‘hire someone to do housework’ thing doesn’t fit in with how we’ve lived our lives up till now and it seems weird. Still, as my sister said, if I use the time I would normally spend cleaning to generate more income, then I may as well outsource it. Especially because I hate it so much. So I’m going to give it a go.
Anyone know a good cleaner?
Dancing With Frogs 
How about talk to the boys and divy up the jobs. Tell them if you are going to pay someone to do it then you would rather pay them and keep the money “in house” rather than fork out for a cleaner AND fork out for other bits the boys may need. If YOU pay for the cleaner AND YOU (or the boys) pay for what they need then that’s twice as much money going out.
haha
Yes I know YOU will still be paying but it’s only ONE LOT OF MONEY.
Does that make sense??
That’s the system we’ve had going for a while now. It was good when they were smaller but now it’s not working.
> Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2013 23:42:22 +0000 > To: frogdancer01@hotmail.com >
Someone to clean is a very sensible idea and worth the price. Only bother is the cleaning up one does for the cleaning person to arrive.
Great Idea 😉 !!!! When I was working full time and flying interstate for chunks of time and working long hours I hated giving up my megre free time to do housework. I had a girl who came in on a Friday morning. The decks would be cleared and beds and towels etc changed. It was sheer bliss to walk in on Friday night and know it was done and I had some leisure time to do the things I liked doing. My cleaner did the kitchen, bathrooms, dusted, vacummed and mopped the floors it took about 2-3 hours. You might want to negotiate things like washing out or in and folded? Dishes, if this is an area of concern? You will still need the boys to help with clearing the decks, the floor of their rooms etc even if it is just into a box on their beds to ensure the cleaner a free passage.
Let me just throw this out there. 🙂
If the dishes are the major problem, what about investing in a decent dishwasher?
They use less water than washing dishes in the sink, and some use less energy because they heat up their own water within the unit which is less costly energy wise than heating the water in the hot water service and then it travelling through the pipes etc.
Just like the Thermomix and how it saves you time, energy and money, a dishwasher can do the same if you pick the right one. I’d recommend a Miele myself.
I don’t see anything wrong with having a cleaner – in fact I was just thinking the same thing for our own house recently though ours would more likely be a once every month type thing just doing bathrooms and floors. I have a bit of work to do before this can happen – a lot of sorting and moving.
My Mum has someone from Jims cleaning (who used to live across the road from them) once a fortnight for floors and bathrooms because Dad is like a bizarre anal retentive steam mopper and their floors are cream tiles and if she gave him the chance to do it, mopping the floors would take up an entire day of their weekend.
It costs her $70 VS an entire day of Dad crawling around with a scraper, yelling for various items to be brought to him to make the floor clean, and then the actual mopping which takes hours and then nobody is allowed near the floor for the rest of the day which is a problem considering the only rooms carpeted are separated by the tiled floors, and also the kitchen is tiled, and then any mess she makes on the kitchen floor for the next 2 weeks earns her a “I just cleaned that what the heck are you doing” speech.
So $70 is very cheap compared to the alternative, lol. 🙂 and associated therapy required.
Up until about 5 years ago I was a ‘domestic goddess for hire’ – at one stage I had about 15 regular clients (some weekly, some fortnightly) although I did whittle it down to a handful of households I liked to work with. It was great when the kids were little – I saw them off to school and was there when they got home, and I still did school excursions and canteen duty and all that stuff. I didn’t work school hols either and that suited most of my clients as they has kids as well.I gave up my last client, reluctantly, when I went back to study. It was a big modern house, and it took me 4 hours to do floors, bathrooms, kitchen, vac, dust (lots of glass tables and ornaments) as well as the ironing (and play with the dog for a bit :))
Perhaps see if you know anyone who has school-age kids who can work during school times, but make sure who-ever you get has done it before and that you speak to someone who has already hired them (although if you hve worked as a ‘domestic goddess for hire’ I’m preaching to the converted :)).
I think it’s brilliant. You can absolutely make money instead of cleaning! I have decided that my reward for finishing my PhD and getting a job is to hire someone to clean. I won’t lie…some late nights, it’s been that one thought that’s kept me in school.
I accidentally deleted your comment! I could make a ‘fat fingers’ joke, but it’s me not used to an iPhone, dammit
Anyway, you last saw me 2yrs ago, and a lot of arse-sitting has gone on since then – you were skinnier than me, oh tiny thing 😉
Lots of people I know hire cleaners, but I struggle with it for the same reasons as you. In fact, that’s probably why I am struggling arm – doing everything, being a harpie et al.
In fact, I’ve been thinking of your rhoomba recently .. Is your still alive? Still love it?
I’m thinking of buying myself one..