TheBanyanTree: Merry Maids

[Margaret R. Kramer]

It’s like paying for sex.  We don’t want to admit we do it.  We don’t want
to admit we’re addicted to it.  But we pay people to clean our houses.

I usually find out a friend or an acquaintance of mine has a housecleaning
service from a casual comment.  “The service is coming today and . . .”
Then it’s like the veil of secrecy is torn away and we begin comparing notes
on our clean houses.

I grew up in an ultra clean house.  My mother never went into a panic state
about cleaning the house for company, because was always clean anyway.  My
grandmother lived with us and between the two of them and  my sister and I
during summer vacations, the house stayed spotless.

I like a clean house, too, but I hate the time it takes me to clean it.  If
I clean our house on my own, it takes about eight hours to do it.  That’s
with a cleaning schedule of once a month.  When Ray helps me, then it cuts
down to about four to five hours.

And it’s a whole Saturday devoted to only cleaning.  There’s no fun.  There’
s no reward, because the house will just get dirty again.  And if something
came up on a scheduled cleaning Saturday, the whole house would go in the
toilet, because we wouldn’t clean until the next month.

Sometimes we would hit a skid of not being able to clean for a few months
and then the house turned to GRUNGE.  The bathrooms were gunky.  There was
an inch of dust on everything.  The kitchen floor needed to be scrubbed.
Then it would take a super duper long time on a Saturday to set the house
right again.

My mother worked part-time and my grandmother was always home, so they had
the “free time” to clean thoroughly.  I work full-time, Ray works part-time,
and the special time we have together on weekends is too precious to be
spent scrubbing out a bathtub.

We began using Merry Maids in April.  We didn’t have to clean the house for
Easter company, because they did it!  We didn’t have to spend weekends in
the summer slaving away polishing the furniture with sweat running down from
our brows, because Merry Maids did it!

They clean every other Monday.  When I come home from work on the days that
they clean, there is no dust on the furniture.  The bathrooms are gleaming.
The kitchen sink shines.  The kitchen floor is spotless.  It’s so wonderful.

Ray and I are not pigs.  Even before Merry Maids, we kept the house picked
up.  The trash was always taken out on a timely basis.  The bed was always
made in the morning.  The dishes were done nightly.  Laundry was always put
away.  We just hated spending the time doing the regular cleaning a house
needs.

I still spend some of Saturday doing light cleaning.  I take out the trash
and recycling.  I do laundry.  I water the plants.  And I vacuum, because we
have two freely shedding dogs.  But every other Monday comes . . . and the
house glistens.

It’s not cheap to have this luxury and I have a lot of guilt feelings that I
should be putting this money into an IRA for retirement instead of spending
it on something that I can and should do myself.

Our homes are also our private places.  Our interests and hobbies are
displayed on walls and shelves.  Our economic status shines through by the
type of furniture we have and if we have a digital big screen TV hidden
behind a fake wall in the family room.  Our bathrooms show our intimate
messes and clutter.  It’s difficult to have someone we barely know come in
and touch and handle and clean the things we hold closely to ourselves.

And that’s why women whisper.  We were brought up in the 50s and 60s with
stay at home moms who cleaned and polished.  Even though we work full time
and often have more than our jobs on our plates and very little free time,
we buy into the super woman image, and feel we should be able to handle it
all.

Some women have told me that they dropped their cleaning services for a
while to save money, but after struggling to clean the house and yet have
time for other things, they hired their services back.

I thought about canceling ours, because of the money issue.  Christmas is
coming.  We want to go on another cruise this spring.  I worry about car
repair costs and medical bills and a new driveway.

But when we skipped a cleaning week because of Labor Day and we were on
vacation, and the house began to slide into its old gunky state, I sure was
glad that Merry Maids came and magically turned it into our special place
again.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

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