The Time the Housekeeper Came to Clean

Posted July 10th, 2012 by kerri and filed in small house living
Tags: , ,
53 Comments

The house after I gave it a top to bot­tom clean­ing /photo by Kevin Pieper

 

 

I faced a truth about myself a long time ago.

I’m not the world’s best house­keeper. Despite hav­ing chores around my mom’s house from the time I was old enough to remem­ber (I used to have to stand on a chair to do dishes and dust those end­less knick-knacks in the for­mal liv­ing room and my bed­room was my chore on Fridays), I never liked house­clean­ing and I am not good at it.

My mother always used to say it was because I’ve always had to work and didn’t have all the time she did as a house­wife to con­cen­trate on get­ting really good at it.

That’s par­tially true, but it’s also true that I just don’t like it. I don’t see a real pur­pose for hav­ing floors that shine like mir­rors and a house that either feels like a museum or as clean as a laboratory.

I would rather always be doing some­thing else, almost any­thing else.

That’s one of the main rea­sons down­siz­ing to Our Little House fit our lifestyle. Dale hates home main­te­nance almost as much as I hate house­work and hav­ing less of each allows us to do more of the things we actu­ally want to do.

I don't think I'm the worst house­keeper either. I can give the house a decent clean­ing in two hours or less, even with six dogs in full time res­i­dence. Still, if some­one is com­ing to stay, it takes me at least twice as long, if not three times longer to thor­oughly clean and I still have many feel­ings of inad­e­quacy regard­ing my abil­ity to do a good job.

It’s time I not only don’t want to lose; it’s time I can­not afford to lose right now with a book con­tract signed and one in the works.

That’s why when I learned my in-laws were com­ing for a stay last week, I decided to do what many of my writer friends have done and that’s hire some­one to come and clean for me.

I asked around the moun­tain and found some­one who came highly rec­om­mended. She was also affordable.

Not ever hav­ing some­one clean for me, I really didn’t know what I should do before she arrived, but pick up some clut­ter and make sure the dogs were out of the way. I didn’t clean the week before she came, although I did a lit­tle sweep­ing of the “tum­ble­dogs” (those hair­balls the dogs gen­er­ate) each day as normal.

When she fin­ished, I gave a cur­sory look around and thought the job looked more than ade­quate. I asked if she wanted to return every other week.

“Honestly, it was too hairy for me,” she said. “I real­ize you have dogs and all…”

Yes, this was a fact I dis­closed before she agreed to come that morn­ing and that's why I was will­ing to pay her more (top dol­lar for wages in this region) than any­one else I had spo­ken to about clean­ing. Also, isn’t the rea­son you hire some­one to clean for you because you need some­one, not because your house is already spotless?

Taken aback and feel­ing even more inad­e­quate as a house­keeper, I handed her the check and told her it was nice meet­ing her.

“What does it mean when a house­keeper refuses to come back” I asked our neigh­bor, who is a very good house­keeper in her own right and has seen our house on its best days and also on its worst.

“I’m angry for you,” she said. “What a crock. You have dogs. What did she expect?”

I real­ized later that while this woman was expe­ri­enced, she was not expe­ri­enced with home clean­ing, she was a com­mer­cial cleaner. Her full time job is clean­ing rooms at a resort (most of them, if they’re like our hotel rooms, are barely lived in as we just use them to bathe and sleep) and the rec­om­men­da­tion I received was from the owner of a beauty salon and an office build­ing, hardly areas where you would encounter liv­ing, espe­cially with pets.

Dale, who has always been the bet­ter house­keeper in the fam­ily, also noticed sur­faces that were not dusted, a clock knocked com­pletely off of the wall and hid­den behind the tele­vi­sion and an area on the floor that was not swept.

Later, he had a few more choice words for my hir­ing “help” when he couldn’t get the tele­vi­sion or DVD player to work because the wires had been unplugged and rehooked wrong.

And so we resolved to pay closer atten­tion to the chores, and we for­mally assigned them. He will con­tinue to clean the bath­room (this has always been his chore as before we left the city and used harsh clean­ers, my aller­gies could not take them) and he now has the weekly task on the floors, which hurt my back. I will con­tinue my daily task of keep­ing the clut­ter down, sweep­ing daily and dust­ing, just as I did when I was a kid, only we don’t have end­less knick-knacks to clean.

We both alter­nate cook­ing and dishes/cleaning the kitchen.

Even still, I found myself nag­ging on clean­ing day as he made excuses. I won though, when I reminded him that he did not want me to hire some­one else to help.

The one thing we need is a good, small vac­cum that does well on lam­i­nate floor­ing in tiny spaces. Any recommendations?

Do you have some­one clean your home or do you and/or your kids and/or spouse help?

 

53 Responses to “The Time the Housekeeper Came to Clean”

  1. Annette says:
    August 1, 2012 at 11:38 pm

    I think you ought to give the roomba vac a try. Let it go by itself. They say that the key to keepng pet hair under con­trol is to vac­uum alot. Just let it do it's thing!

  2. Theresa says:
    July 26, 2012 at 8:47 am

    This is the best site I know to help you get into a rou­tine of doing things around the house, in a way that doesn't stress you!

    http://​fly​lady​.net/

  3. Terri Alice says:
    July 16, 2012 at 11:00 pm

    We have 24 cats and 2 dogs. Floors are tile and some wood.
    I have a small Sanyo can­is­ter that does a fine job. Inexpensive, easy to move around and bagless.

  4. Heather L. says:
    July 16, 2012 at 11:32 am

    I'm pretty sure that when we're on our death beds, we won't be think­ing "I wish I had cleaned my house more."

  5. Alisa Bowman says:
    July 16, 2012 at 8:52 am

    That's nuts– the house is sup­posed to be dirty. Crazy that she didn't want to clean your house because of the dog hair. She could have charged extra, I suppose.

    • Kerri says:
      July 16, 2012 at 2:23 pm

      Thanks, Alisa. While we think she is afford­able, she is also charg­ing top rates for this area. My hus­band just thinks she didn't want to work for her money.

  6. Roxanne @ Champion of My Heart says:
    July 12, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    I would have been frus­trated and insulted as well. I've always cleaned my own house, and I used to joke that I knew my friends were mak­ing "too much money" when every­one started hir­ing house­keep­ers, but I get that it's a good deci­sion for many peo­ple. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.

  7. mat says:
    July 11, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    We split the clean­ing duties at our house. The wife and I alter­nate nights for dishes, I vac­uum, she dusts, I help with laun­dry.
    We con­stantly remind our son to pick up his toys (since they're all in a cube unit in the liv­ing room) and he's pretty good about clean­ing off the cof­fee table when we have light break­fasts with Saturday car­toons.
    Our expe­ri­ence has always been that any vac­uum starts out well, but dete­ri­o­rates. We used a hand-me-down Rainbow (out­landishly expen­sive) for years until it became too com­pli­cated for me to fix (and too expen­sive to send out). I've heard a lot of good things about Dyson–even refurb'd Dyson, so that's prob­a­bly going to be a future pur­chase. Every now and then, Woot​.com has a good deal on them.

    • Kerri says:
      July 12, 2012 at 11:11 am

      Thanks, Mat. We invested in a good vac­cum in the city years ago, a Kirby, that was "out­landish expen­sive!" It was still going strong when we moved, but was big and heavy and I knew I wouldn't have car­pet here, so I didn't think I needed one. Small and light­weight that can han­dle non-carpeted sur­faces and dog hair is what we need. Thanks for your thoughts.

      • Thomas says:
        July 13, 2012 at 9:51 pm

        You might try a car­petsweeper they work on wood or lam­i­nate floors as well. they have cheap ones at Walmart or Lowe's, but I recomend look­ing at Lehman's Non Eletrical web­site. There are also rechar­gable ones too.

  8. Vida says:
    July 11, 2012 at 9:41 am

    HI Kerri,

    So totally under­stand where you're com­ing from regard­ing house­work… hate it myself but can't bear to live in a dirty/untidy space. Like you, small house and 4, soon to be 5 dogs track­ing earth into the house all day. My Dyson vac­uum cleaner saved my life, it is the BEST vac­uum cleaner I have ever used and abused. Bagless and super pow­er­ful and they even have a spe­cial model for ani­mal hair/fur. It was pricey but is going on three years now with no prob­lems. Before this I used to destroy vac­uum clean­ers annu­ally. Now, if I could get a good steam mop (not avail­able in Greece) to com­ple­ment the Dyson I'd be REALLY happy. Good luck!

  9. Laura says:
    July 11, 2012 at 6:41 am

    We have a cleaner that comes every other week. She is respon­si­ble for the bath­rooms and the floors. We pay her for two hours. If she has extra time she wipes down the kitchen cab­i­nets and cleans the kitchen sink. We live in a small house (1100 sq ft) and have declut­tered exten­sively so dust­ing is not a big deal for us. We put every­thing away before she comes so she can con­cen­trate on doing the tasks I hate to do! It works really well for us and is very afford­able. I am very happy to spend time with my kids on the week­ends instead of clean­ing. The kids are respon­si­ble for keep­ing their rooms tidy, espe­cially the night before the cleaner comes.

    • Kerri says:
      July 11, 2012 at 7:24 am

      That sounds like a great arrange­ment, Laura. I always wanted a cleaner in the city, we had 1,100 sq. ft. there too. But after Dale went to work nights, it was pretty much impossible.

      • Kerri says:
        July 11, 2012 at 7:25 am

        And I've always said I think it's more impor­tant to spend time with your kids than mak­ing sure the house is spot­less any­way. I think they'll remem­ber the time you spent with them much more than if the house was clean!

  10. Carol says:
    July 11, 2012 at 6:37 am

    Cleaning time has been dis­cussed in the past, so I decided to see just how long it would take me to clean my cabin, soon to be our lit­tle house. I can clean it, really clean with win­dows and every­thing in 2 hours. A reg­u­lar clean­ing takes about 1 hour. 1/2 hour if I have a good book I'd rather read. We're so remote that a clean­ing lady would never be able to find us so that's not an option. In the past, I hired a clean­ing ser­vice for my large home and did absolutely noth­ing before they came for the esti­mate. I told them this is it, price it and clean it. Had the same ladies for 20 years. Great job. I was lucky.

    • Kerri says:
      July 11, 2012 at 7:22 am

      That's how long it takes me if I'm focused, 2 hours. Much longer if I'm doing out­side and inside win­dows, clean­ing the shelves in the fridge, tops of the cab­i­nets, etc. You were lucky, from what I under­stand, it isn't that easy to find good cleaners.

  11. Kathleen Winn says:
    July 10, 2012 at 7:49 pm

    I once had a house­clean­ing ser­vice come and clean our for­mer home when we were hav­ing a grad­u­a­tion party for my daugh­ter. Despite the fact that I did cur­sory clean­ing a few days prior to their ser­vice, they still said the house should have been priced as a "spe­cial case" because of our ani­mals– two cats and one dog in a two story house. That was the last time I actu­ally hired some­one to clean our home and since then we've moved into a larger house.

    Sometimes I think it would be nice to pay some­one (if they'd be will­ing) just to do our down­stairs, which includes kitchen, liv­ing and din­ing room, break­fast room, mas­ter bed­room and bath­room. Our upstairs gets such light use that it isn't that much to keep clean myself. Haven't fully decided on that yet.

    By the way, as some­one who was lucky enough to get to stay at the Little House for a visit with you and Dale, I have to say that I think you're way too hard on your­self with regard to your house­keep­ing. Your Little House, as well as Belle Writer's Studio, were spot­less (and hair­less) when I was there, to the point of mak­ing me feel embar­rassed that I don't do a bet­ter job keep­ing my own house clean, with much more space and fewer pets!

    • Kerri says:
      July 11, 2012 at 7:20 am

      Thank you for say­ing that, Kathy! When this woman came, it had only been 2 weeks after you and I had cleaned well again (not to men­tion the daily sweep­ing) once since. I'm glad it was clean enough that you want to come back! :)

  12. Melanie @ Frugal Kiwi says:
    July 10, 2012 at 7:41 pm

    I saw one of those funny eCards the other day that I imme­di­ately posted on my FB feed. It said, "Dull women have immac­u­late houses. And, honey, I come from a long line of fas­ci­nat­ing women." There is also a body of research that sup­ports the idea of cre­ative peo­ple being messy and that a cer­tain level of chaos is needed for some peo­ple to cre­ate. My house always has inter­est­ing projects on the go, which isn't super tidy. Here is a NY Times arti­cle on the sub­ject http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​6​/​1​2​/​2​1​/​g​a​r​d​e​n​/​2​1​m​e​s​s​.​h​t​m​l​?​p​a​g​e​w​a​n​t​ed=all

  13. debbie riedel says:
    July 10, 2012 at 7:30 pm

    I also do home clean­ing & been recomended sev­eral time's. I take a cloth spray windex on it wipe the knick knack's off ,spray the shelve's table etc. I have 2 dog's & 11 cat's & my favorite clean­ing tool is the swiffter extended wand ,u can do ceil­ing fan, shelve's any thing . in a quick hurry I take them on the floor & gather up the hair , shake it out & go again. the shark is a bless­ing & I do have real & lam­i­nated floor's . good luck !

  14. Kate says:
    July 10, 2012 at 2:53 pm

    Yeah, like most rela­tion­ship dis­as­ters, it's pretty funny in ret­ro­spect. My home may be grub­bier now, but it's MUCH happier.

  15. Kate says:
    July 10, 2012 at 1:57 pm

    Many years and a divorce ago, my sister-in-law (husband's brother's wife) cleaned for us. I can't remem­ber if she did win­dows, but she did my hus­band. I should've known some­thing was amiss when hubby oh-so-considerately sug­gested we hire her.

  16. Deirdre Brackett says:
    July 10, 2012 at 1:24 pm

    If you visit the web­site Flylady.net…you will be amazed. She is like a per­sonal coach for how to get the chaos out of your life…you've actu­ally done much of the work your­self with your down­siz­ing, but she has so many cool tools to make house­keep­ing eas­ier and fun! I love her..even though I still have lots of clut­ter and have a long way to go, I'm work­ing on it through this web­site and its help!
    I had the same issues with a part time house keeper!

  17. Maureen says:
    July 10, 2012 at 10:56 am

    I SO feel your "pain". We had a gal clean come in to clean every 2 weeks after my mother moved in with us (my SIL payed for the ser­vice). Having never hired an actual house-cleaner (and yes, we have dogs) I did my best to de-clutter before she got here so all the sur­faces would be eas­ily got­ten to. After com­plain­ing (nicely, I HATE to com­plain) about the inad­e­quate dust­ing (embar­rass­ingly enough, I could write my name in the dust left on sev­eral shelves) she quit, say­ing that her 'aller­gies' couldn't han­dle the dog hair and that the house was just too dirty. She also responded to my com­plaint about water rings on a painted table that maybe I needed to, "use a coaster". I'm kinda glad she fired her­self before I had to;)

  18. Brette Sember says:
    July 10, 2012 at 10:48 am

    I think you should not let what this woman said get to you. A com­mer­cial cleaner would not be used to house­clean­ing at all. And peo­ple who do not have dogs do not under­stand how much fur there just is every­where even if you cleaned the day before.

    • Kerri says:
      July 10, 2012 at 2:10 pm

      How about if I cleaned the minute before, Brette? I even wrote an essay once about this for pet​side​.com enti­tled "The Tumble Dogs." :) I sweep and turn around and they're back, star­ing me down for the show­down! LOL Thanks, I will not let her com­ment bother me.

  19. Allie says:
    July 10, 2012 at 10:44 am

    I like the Bissell Pet Hand Vac Combo. You do have to clean it reg­u­larly, but it works very well. I am a house­keeper and the ser­vice and response you received is deplorable.
    For your peace of mind, con­sider putting your­self on a cycling sched­ule an reward your­self for accom­plish­ing your goals. Pretty soon it will be habitual.

  20. Lindsay says:
    July 10, 2012 at 10:38 am

    I think it is extra hard to make your­self stay inside and clean when it is so nice out­side. During the sum­mer our house fre­quently looks like a tor­nado hit it : ) We have 4 kids, ages rang­ing from 2 to 12 and the 3 old­est do chores for allowance, much of which is clean­ing up after the youngest : ). Honestly, I couldn't keep up with every­thing if they didn't pitch in. And also, I try not to stress about it too much. It's just going to get dirty again lol : )
    As for lam­i­nate floors, we have a shark 'vac then steam". It does great on our lam­i­nate and tile, esp with dog hair. We have 2 very hairy dogs. Then it has a nifty attach­ment to steam mop the floors. No smelly clean­ers needed, which I like. I think we payed around $150 for it maybe and it was well worth it.

    • Kerri says:
      July 10, 2012 at 2:07 pm

      Those Shark Vacs sound like some­thing to look into. I think I can steam clean lam­i­nate. Thanks for the com­ments and sug­ges­tions!
      And you're right, it does just get dirty again! :)

  21. Kim says:
    July 10, 2012 at 9:49 am

    Pfft. Silly woman. Don't give it a sec­ond thought.

    I've had a gal over to help me clean once a week dur­ing school sea­son… I real­ized at the end of the school year that she really wasn't doing that great a job. I'm torn over whether to keep using her this fall; on one hand, any help is good, and she's cheap; on the other, what's the point if I'm not happy with her thoroughness?

    • Kerri says:
      July 10, 2012 at 9:57 am

      That's what I thought, Kim, if I don't like them, cheap really doesn't mat­ter. Thanks for the com­ments. She's a dis­tant mem­ory now and I'm sure one day, I will look back and laugh. ;)

  22. CJB says:
    July 10, 2012 at 9:44 am

    I have hired clean­ers for the house before. Generally I will do this as a present to myself around the hol­i­days. :-)

    Yes, you should always pick up your clut­ter before they arrive. They don't know where you gen­er­ally keep your __X__ so don't expect them to put it away. This includes books, dishes, and laun­dry unless specif­i­cally agreed upon in advance.

    Have hired spec­tac­u­lar and have had not so great. I ALWAYS do a thor­ough walk through before pay­ing and they leave. I ask for touch ups. One lady was short — and she didn't clean the top of the fridge. OH, I have a step stool! That sort of thing.

    A few things that "should" hap­pen.
    — Cleaner should visit the house to see the con­di­tion prior to agree­ing upon a price.
    — Provide you with a list of the things she would and would not do. Dust — yes, win­dows — no, type of thing.
    — No elec­tron­ics should have been plugged / unplugged or rewired. Only shifted so that it can be dusted. Now if the wires fell off — see below:
    — Anything knocked, fell, or dis­con­nected, you should have been noti­fied imme­di­ately whether it looked dam­aged or not.

    Try again — but ask for a RESIDENTIAL cleaner and check one ref­er­ence — even visit the home of the ref­er­ence if you are comfortable.

    • Kerri says:
      July 10, 2012 at 9:53 am

      Wow, thank you for this detailed list, CJB. We really live too far out in the coun­try to hire a "ser­vice" where we could spec­ify a res­i­den­tial cleaner. We just would have to find some­one who is good and self employed. Nope, this woman was hor­ri­ble and cer­tainly not worth the money she was charg­ing for the going rates here.

  23. Sue says:
    July 10, 2012 at 9:20 am

    I've never had hired help as I always worked at low pay­ing jobs and felt it would take all my prof­its. Although that might be worth it! :) A lot of peo­ple I know that had help com­plained they didn't do a good job so I know it's hard to find some­one.
    My mom was a ter­ri­ble house­keeper. She started off ok but some­where down the line of 7 kids and a messy hus­band just stopped clean­ing. My sis­ter and I also used to stand on a chair doing dishes! Some of us kids went oppo­site my mom and, while not obses­sive (unless you ask our kids), really like to keep it clean. And some are not so much on clean­ing.
    Like you, I love that there is less clean­ing in a lit­tle house! It's one of the best things.
    I do most of the clean­ing at the lit­tle cabin. My hus­band is work­ing back in the big city and has a cou­ple more year's before retire­ment so we keep an apart­ment there. I used to do the clean­ing when I went to the city but I don't go much any­more since I retired. He does most of the trav­el­ing back and forth and he has taken over the apart­ment clean­ing. Which is a fact I love!
    It's much more fun to do other things than clean! The out­doors is always call­ing and do are the books.

    • Kerri says:
      July 10, 2012 at 9:32 am

      Well, I fig­ured since I don't "treat" myself to things such as manicures/pedicures and I don't have a shoe or clothes obses­sion, this could be a treat that made me feel good. Not. I almost cried when I was telling my neigh­bor about this. Then Dale went on and on about what a bad job she had done any­way. I guess he was telling the clean­ing lady where he works about this woman and she offered to do our house for less than half (which I would never ask any­one to do). I pre­dict he will take her up on her offer if I have to keep nag­ging him about his "chores." :) Kind of like when the air went out in my Blazer and he couldn't find the stuff for it until he had to drive it! ;)

  24. Kelly says:
    July 10, 2012 at 9:16 am

    I bought a Shark Navigator, and it picks up after our 3 kids, 2 dogs, 1 cat, and 4 kit­tens (!) beau­ti­fully. I have always hated doing floors, and now I get a weird kick out of see­ing all the hair it picked up. Good on tile, too, so I assume lam­i­nate would be the same. Good luck!

  25. Deb Berning says:
    July 10, 2012 at 9:06 am

    I used to be self-employed as a res­i­den­tial house keeper for mostly elderly folks most of whom had pets. I can't do it now due to per­ma­nent injuries to my hsoul­der but you expect hairs in houses with pets. I never had a prob­lem. But I never unplugged items unless directly asked to in order to clean. She wasn't a good res­i­den­tial cleaner, I agree with your hubby on that. Only time I do a good clean­ing is when my MIL comes to visit. She hates cats so I have to do a com­plete clean­ing which takes a month or so. This includes wash­ing cur­tains and such in the rooms she'll be in. Our upstairs has jsut cats in it so I only vac­uum up there about every few months or so. No need as they occupy it. I did more or rather kids did when they were still at home. Why do it, no one cares? I have more impor­tant things to do esp. since I have been water­ing my gar­den weekly since end of March and it never ends as we don't get that stuff called rain.

    • Kerri says:
      July 10, 2012 at 9:38 am

      And there's that, Deb. Dale doesn't seem to mind that the house isn't spot­less and the dogs don't care either, so it's easy for me to pick up that book instead or spend time out­doors. I used to be a lit­tle more obses­sive with it, when the kids were home, no one did any­thing until the house was cleaned on Saturday morn­ings. Now, I say, "Let's go!"