Someone Else is Cleaning My House

There has been a cataclysmic shift in my household this month. I hired someone to clean my home. Every year when REAL SIMPLE's annual house cleaning issue arrives in the mail I think, "Ah shit. I forgot to clean my house this year!" I'm really good at organizing and tidying up my home but I've never been good at cleaning it.

I finally decided to hire someone when my 2-year-old son was rolling around on the floor and came up with a purple, hairy dust bunny stuck to his sweet drooly face. Hiring a house cleaner always seemed like a completely extravagant luxury reserved for well-to-do families who had huge houses to keep clean. And I guess I also felt guilty about hiring someone to do a job that I didn't want to do myself. Somewhere deep in my DNA (my great-great-grandmother was an Irish immigrant laundress) was a sexist strain that felt if there was an able-bodied woman at home, then cleaning the house would fall to her. If my mother was here right now, she'd remind me of an incident from my early childhood when I refused to pick up after myself and stated that it was "her job" to clean up. (Oye!)

The first day that our house cleaner was here I followed her around asking if I could help or if she needed me for anything. I'm sure she was thinking, "Lady, let me do my work and get back to your children!" But after a few visits, I'm feeling more at peace with my choice to outsource this particular chore. I cannot fully express my glee and relief at seeing my home in a clean state. Its spiritual. Plus, I've had more time to focus on my children, organize our home, and more time to write and paint. This week, I was able to spend more time doing things like this:

And this:

And this:

How about you?  

Do you have a cleaning person or service?