I like having a clean house. No, I love having a clean house.
BUT
I cannot keep up with the cleaning and laundry by myself. Work and taking care of the children are far more important to me.
SO
Over the years, I have had a few different people come clean house for me to help out. Today, I am going to share my adventures in attempting to have a maid.
The first was a woman named Sherry. She was really good at helping clean, but she was too much drama. Her 15 year old daughter was hooked on meth and pregnant, and she went on and on and on about the "baby daddy" and what he did to annoy her. Frankly, if my 15 year old daughter were to discover she was pregnant by a man in his 20s, I'd probably have him thrown in jail instead of allowing them to get married and live under my trailer roof...if I lived in a trailer. Finally, I just had to let her go. I just couldn't take the chain smoking in my garage and long stories about meth addicted teenagers. So, I fired her. She was upset. I think I was more upset.
Then, I hired Merry Maids. What a mistake!!???!! The woman who owned the franchise was so disorganized. They wound up filing bankruptcy. They were never reliable either. Some days two women would come. Other days, a woman I'd never met would come. Other times, the employee wouldn't show up until three days after the cleaning was scheduled. It just wasn't for me. When the company filed bankruptcy, they sent me an invoice for additional cleanings that had never happened. I had to call and be really ugly about it. I wasn't paying for visits that never took place.
After that two of the women who worked for someone else I knew started cleaning for me. Their names were Sondra and Sandra. They were sisters. No, I'm not joking. They even lived in trailers across from each other. They weren't very reliable either, so I canned them. It just didn't sit well with me that I would schedule a cleaning, and they wouldn't show up. One time they did it to me on a day when we were having a dinner party. I had called them the day before to make sure they knew that it was of the utmost importance that they show up the next day during the day. So all day I was expecting to come home and not have to worry about mopping the floors before our guests arrived. I got home only to discover that no one had come to clean. I had to frantically pull things together. The women showed up about 20 minutes after our company did. I politely told them I didn't want them scrubbing the toilets while I entertained friends.
About a year ago a friend of mine recommended a young woman to me. She is absolutely wonderful. She is a college student who only cleans enough to pay the rent on her apartment. I love her. She is my new best friend. Ok. That may be a little extreme, but she makes me super happy!! I pay her between 60 and 100 every time she comes depending on how nasty the house is and if I need her to do extra things. She mops all floors including the bathrooms, vacuums, polishes furniture, washes windows, cleans the bathrooms, wipes down all the kitchen counter tops, and anything else I ask her to do. One time she even stripped all the sheets off all the beds, washed and dried the sheets, and stayed at my house until they were done so she could re-make all the beds.
If I had to make a suggestion about finding someone to help with housework, it would be to find someone that your friends know and use too. I didn't get her name out of the paper or off Craig's list. She is an actual human being that came with positive reviews on the front side.
And no, I will not give you her name and number unless you pay me. She is too good to share. :)
