Who cleans up after you?

I love neat and tidy. I love organized and compartmentalized. Magazines like Style at Home, Dwell and Real Simple are like porn for me. And porn is fantasy, an escape from reality, something to daydream about. Because my house is nothing like the homes in these magazines. And that’s okay. I have kids who have developed a magic potion to multiply Polly Pocket accessories and make them go viral on our floors, in our closets, in our beds. I have a wonderful husband who has a very important collection of baseball caps (whatever) that live in the couch cushions, on my record player, the kitchen counter and the dining room table. And I’m not perfect. While I can never find a hair elastic when I need one, on any given day you can see them scattered under couches (getting humped by dustbunnies).

Weekends we do the big de-clutter. Jo calls them whirlwinds. Everything gets put back where it belongs. Children are placed in their rooms to put things away (which usually results in them taking more things out – on Saturday Edie re-discovered her bucket of 1000+ melt beads…..yayyyyy). And the house looks amazing.

But. Oh yes, there is a but. It lacks that pinesol smell. That one chemical smell I like because it means things have been scrubbed, sanitized, purified and cleaned. That smell has be lacking for a few weeks now as we have lost yet another cleaning service. I have gone through so many cleaning people throughout the years, after our last one left us (you know who you are) we have decided enough with it, we can do it on our own. Or can we? Growing up, I always had a cleaning lady. Her name was Doris. Her cleaning days were called Doris Day, haha, get it? So Doris came every Wednesday, she scrubbed and laundered, while I daydreamed and resented her for occupying the t.v. in the afternoon because she watched her soaps while she ironed. So I blame my childhood, which has resulted in me being so adverse to cleaning, and generally sucking at it.

And so, Jo and I are going to start doing it on our own. But cleaning a whole house at once is a daunting task. Our house isn’t big, but there seems to be a lot of space to clean. And so dear reader, I ask you, what is your strategy in cleaning? Do you tackle a room a day? Do you suck it up for 4 hours a week and just give ‘er? Or do you just fork out cold hard cash to someone to do it for you?