For the first time in my life, we are paying someone to clean our house.
I am terribly conflicted about this stunning development.
Part of me stands by the long list of reasons why I have always cleaned up after myself.
1) My mama raised me that way.
2) Nobody else should have to deal with my filth.
3) Maids are for rich folk.
Then, there is the part of me that thinks I will sleep more soundly knowing mysterious kid goop will disappear, nail clippings will be sucked from the carpet like an alien abduction and we might finally be able to see through the glass doors of the shower.
We were still so uncomfortable with the concept that we totally spent an hour last night “pre-cleaning.” Which begs the question, why are we paying someone else to do it?
My husband swept and vacuumed up all the dog hair. (and then told the kids the resulting tumbleweed was a Guinea pig. I swear my son’s eyes lit up with excitement for a second)
The kids “helping Daddy” by yanking the cord around.
I wiped down all of the counters and tidied up all the random marbles, rubber bands and dirty socks that migrate around the house like gypsies. (no offense to any Gypsies out there)
I’m just hoping the woman who cleans sees that there’s no food goo on the kitchen counters and forgives the strange pink mold on the floor of our shower.
The last time we had someone clean for us we were moving out of our bungalow and letting the renters move in.
When the woman said, “Man, these people probably never cleaned the house before. The dog hair is unbelievable,” my husband straight up lied and pretended it was the previous renters. (who didn’t exist… we were the ones living in a house of filth)
We aren’t disgusting people. We are just full-time professionals with two messy rugrats, two mush-faced old dogs and ZERO TIME.
We are just scraping by.
It’s a choice between laundry or cleaning.
Bath time or cleaning.
Eating or cleaning.
Sleeping or cleaning.
At some point, you’re just like SCREW CLEANING.
Unless there is Vodka. Then, I would consider drinking and cleaning.
Living The American Scream 
the bull and the babe blog
Yes! All of this. Luckily, I did a barter with a gal that just started her own cleaning biz, so we got 30 hours of cleanings from her. I got used to it real quick and now that we’re down to just 4 hours I’m clinging on to them and waiting till the house gets atrocious again so she can do a cleaning finale. We have two bostons and who knew the little punks would be so messy! ♥