Shameful admission

I'll be the first one to admit it - I'm not a great housekeeper.  I'm not the worst ever, and despite what my husband thinks, we're never going to end up on Hoarders.  But the daily grind of picking up the same stuff over and over again, cleaning the same filth only to have it reappear a day later, trying to keep up with two other people who aren't motivated to pick up, either?  I'm bad at it.

Now, overlooking stuff?  That I'm good at.  I can ignore cobwebs and grimy baseboards with the best of people.  A slightly scummy toilet bowl doesn't bother me unless we have guests coming over - and even then, it's probably cleaner than the ones used by all their boy-children at home, anyway.  And that pink mildew in the shower is probably not going to melt the skin off my feet, so it can wait for a few days until I have the energy to deal with it.

Jason, on the other hand, isn't so skilled at overlooking these sorts of small issues.  After living in the house for more than five years, he may not know where the pizza pans get stored, but he can spot a cobweb from a mile away.  Doesn't do anything about them other than complain, most of the time, but he sure sees them.  Which means that he gets grumpy because the person who doesn't work or volunteer two days a week (me) isn't all caught up on cleaning things, while the person who works five days a week (him) gets stuck doing the laundry and unloading the dishwasher.  Some day he'll notice that he hasn't paid a bill, stayed home for a repair person, vacuumed, cleaned a cat box, mowed the grass, shoveled the driveway, taken a kid to the doctor or the hospital, or taken his own stuff to the post office more than a handful of times in the past few years and yet it all seems to miraculously get done, but until then, cleaning is occasionally a contentious issue around here.

Our dishes get clean, our clothes are (mostly) clean.  You're not going to get typhus from sitting on our couch.  On some days the house is even relatively de-cluttered.  But it's not clean.

So that's why when we got a generous gift from my uncle for Christmas this year, Jason and I decided to put it toward hiring a cleaning service.  It won't cover a whole year, but even six months of getting the house clean - CLEAN - every two weeks will be worth it for the sake of our sanity and marriage.

The initial cleaning was today.  It took three people and an occasional supervisor more than two hours to do the job, which included detailing the kitchen and bathrooms, plus a "normal" clean everywhere else.  My kitchen is so clean I plan to never cook in it again. My toilet shines like the top of the Chrysler building.  My baseboards are clean.  Like, seriously clean.  And the few cobwebs we had lingering in the corners are gone.

Best money I've spent in a LONG time.