Friday, June 25, 2004
Okay, there's something I need to come clean about. I'm now a stay-at-home mom (with only one kid) who has a housecleaner.
I've always been a lousy housekeeper. I can pay bills, plan meals, grocery shop, cook, weed and do laundry, but cleaning is beyond me. While our house is not filthy, it's also not ready for guests at a moment's notice. I swipe at the kitchen every night, and try to return things to their places, but at the end of twelve hours of parenting, it's tough to get enthused about dusting the television.
So I hired a woman to come twice a month. I'm justifying it because she's a single mom who just quit her job with a national cleaning service. She's cleaned my neighbors' house for two years, and they sing her praises. It's hard to know what a fair wage is. I'm assuming it's under the table, so her take-home is pretty good. Somehow it assuages my guilt to pay her close to $20 an hour.
And I figure that it's cheaper than marriage counseling! Because who among us hasn't done the math: Is going to work for nine hours and having to deal with an unreasonable boss and psycho coworkers (but let's not forget that lunch hour, and listening to a book on CD in the car) less than or equal to dealing with an active, demanding nine-month old who may or may not nap alone? So paying someone else to clean up after us will, hopefully, be worth it.
I've always been a lousy housekeeper. I can pay bills, plan meals, grocery shop, cook, weed and do laundry, but cleaning is beyond me. While our house is not filthy, it's also not ready for guests at a moment's notice. I swipe at the kitchen every night, and try to return things to their places, but at the end of twelve hours of parenting, it's tough to get enthused about dusting the television.
So I hired a woman to come twice a month. I'm justifying it because she's a single mom who just quit her job with a national cleaning service. She's cleaned my neighbors' house for two years, and they sing her praises. It's hard to know what a fair wage is. I'm assuming it's under the table, so her take-home is pretty good. Somehow it assuages my guilt to pay her close to $20 an hour.
And I figure that it's cheaper than marriage counseling! Because who among us hasn't done the math: Is going to work for nine hours and having to deal with an unreasonable boss and psycho coworkers (but let's not forget that lunch hour, and listening to a book on CD in the car) less than or equal to dealing with an active, demanding nine-month old who may or may not nap alone? So paying someone else to clean up after us will, hopefully, be worth it.
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