Or: How hiring a cleaning service changed my life.
I have a new guilty pleasure: coming home from work every other week to a spotless house. I never used to mind cleaning the house, but with a little one it felt like cleaning was eating up every moment of my free time. Still, it didn't even occur to me that I could have a cleaning service, that is something fancy people with fancy houses have, not people who bring their one baby to work part-time and can vacuum the whole house without unplugging the machine. But then I read this poem:
Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.
The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.
- Ruth Hulbert Hamilton
It was posted by Andrea in a comment feed on Smile and Wave about being spread too thin, and something clicked. I enjoy doing the shopping and cooking the stew, but the cleaning and scrubbing was in the way of what I want to do most of all: shower my baby with undivided attention. So with a little reworking of the family budget (let's face it: we weren't using that gym membership anyway) I am now that fancy person with a professionally cleaned house. Best of all, I learned that I don't have to do it all, and that getting help actually makes motherhood sweeter.
