I think I need to fire our maid. Or is that not politically correct? Is it house cleaner? I have always referred to her as the resident domestic goddess, however, the more I investigate this field of work, the more I realize, ours' is terrible! First of all, I decided to pose a Facebook question to anyone that has a cleaning service come into their home, or anyone who has ever done this work. Financially, it appears that we can not continue for me to not work, however, I am not compromising my children in any way to go to work. As willing as I am to sacrifice myself, I will not allow myself to work in order to pay a nanny to drive Charlie to speech, do his homework with him, or be the first one to see both of them onto or off of a bus, each day. That's my job first, and I will not give that up. However, if I could find a flexible schedule type of job that would allow me to work a few mornings a week to earn some much needed funds, I'm in! Housekeeping seemed like a viable option. Until....
FB friend number one that responded was amazing. She and I spoke for about 20 minutes. I didn't know that talk of cleaning a home could take that long, seeing as I clean my entire house in that amount of time. (I spray my home made cleaner in all three bathrooms, then go back to the first bathroom and wipe it down, then grab the vacuum and do the entire house.) On occasion, I grab the mop, but that area of mop need is no larger than about 60 sq. ft.. Could probably do that with a wet cloth and my feet. With a house that is under 1400 sq. ft., it is almost ridiculous that some people don't have cleaner homes in our 'hood. However, I thought my home was clean, until....
FB friend number two shared much of the same as FB friend number one, however, each one added a few more details than the last, and what I found is, I am not doing it right. First, blinds get cleaned, every time a cleaning happens. I thought they got cleaned as often as the blades of a fan. And that is clearly when enough dust accumulated to warrant cleaning. In my home, that is annually. Oops. Need to try to pay more attention to that, seeing as it will be hard to do this in other people's homes if I don't know how to do it in my own home. Second, baseboards? Each time you clean? I thought the way to make those look good was to repaint them. Wait, you actually clean those? Who knew? I wonder how those get cleaned..... Third, I thought about my dusting technique, and while I works incredibly well for me, I am not so sure how a client would feel about me grabbing my fleece sock prior to putting it into the wash and wiping down the wood furniture with it. If you don't do this- you should! I prefer not to use many chemicals in my home, and while I do use them, on occasion, I find that nothing grabs dust as well as the sock, and then, into a wash it goes. We don't buy paper towels here. Everything gets cleaned with a washable towel- or my sock.
From learning the extra nice touches of folding over toilet paper into freakin' origami shapes to leaf blowing the outside entrance way, I am intimidated by the thought of cleaning houses now. I really wanted to just walk into an organized home, clean the bathrooms, kitchen area, and dust and vacuum. However, it appears there is more to cleaning than that. And now, it is the middle of the night, and all I can think is, "How the heck do you clean blinds, baseboards and bathrooms in an efficient fashion or in order to make money and be home for the migits?
PS To Edit, who posed the question regarding how prepared is my back and soft hands for the work at hand? My back can pull an ox now that I am working out on machines to strengthen, and my hands NEVER were soft and subtle. Ask Starr- she used to attack my skin (mostly my elbows) with a nail file in order to soften them. FYI- A nail file on skin is not very effective.
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