Neither B, nor I are good housekeepers. We’re both a little forgetful, and we both suffer from some tunnel vision, so we don’t always remember that there is a mess we aren’t seeing. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.
Since we’ve been in the new place, we’ve done very, very well (I have even continued to make the beds daily!) Laundry has taken over a bit, and so have my shoes, but I intend to get that sorted out today. But something else that has helped me is having gotten help. Since we’ve been here, I’ve managed to squirrel away enough every month (just about $80), to bring Molly Maids in once a month. B and I keep the big stuff in check, and they come in and do all the things that never occur to me–like baseboards and dusting. I love them. I have never met the ladies who clean my townhouse, but I love them like family.
We had also been dealing with a lot of stress about getting our house in shape to sell. Not only are we not good housekeepers, but we are not good at moving. Ha! Given that we moved from a packed out 1700 square foot home, into a 1001 square foot townhouse apartment, it meant getting rid of about 900 square feet of stuff. What to do???
We knew we were going to rent a dumpster (and thank you tacky neighbors for taking the open top dumpster we paid for as an invitation to throw away your old mattresses, meaning that we are dangerously close to overfull–please do not pile on top of it), but between each one of us rotating sick weekends, and both of us working full time, we couldn’t figure out when we would get it done. So, we hired temps.
They cleared everything in under 2 hours and did a fantastic job! We do have to pay for a minimum of 4 hours, but that’s still cheaper than the extra month of mortgage we’d be paying if it took us another 2 weeks before we could get started on it personally. It’s cheaper than a week of mortgage, actually. The dumpster cost more than the hired labor.
Not really sure what my point is other than this: If you can’t do it yourself, chances are, you can hire someone to do it for you. And if you are in a position to do so, I think it is worth the money. It also helps stimulate the economy and create work for people who might desperately need it.
So you see? My inability to clean up after myself is helping us come out of the recession! I am a recession buster!
And now I am going to go take a shower, because I spent 2 hours cleaning out the refrigerator/freezer that was accidentally turned off for a week. Full of food. It smelled like we had been storing heads in there! Thank God for Lysol.
The Outside Lane 