My house is currently probably as clean as it’s ever been, and even better I’m not the one who made it that way. Basically what I’m saying is I finally have hired someone to clean my house who did an outstanding job. I put off hiring anyone to clean my house for years and years. Back when my grandmother was still alive she would tell me all the time that since my husband and I both work full-time that we should really hire someone to clean instead of doing it ourselves. That always seemed like something other people of a different sort did despite the fact that my grandparents definitely made less money than we do and they had someone. Most of my friends don’t have anyone cleaning their houses, and part of me still lives in the mindset of my salary as opposed to our household salary in which case I really could not justify the expense. As a household though we definitely make enough money to support it.

The first Christmas after we got married my husband’s gift was for us to get someone to clean the house. Of course being my husband he likes to gift ideas and then make me do all the work. Thus I was the one who wound up calling around to get estimates, and then couldn’t make myself pull the trigger. I just kept thinking about how that was a lot of money we could use on something else. So I never wound up hiring anyone.

I would think about it or talk about it randomly over the next five years, but the money thing was always in the back of my mind of course. And more importantly my anxiety over making phone calls prevented me from ever contacting people. I do not like the phone. I basically talk to my family once a week or so and my husband if I happen to be out of town. I rarely call anyone else, and the thought of calling people I don’t know is crippling to me. I put off so many things just because I don’t want to have to call to make appointments or contact someone about them. Thank god I live in the age of electronic communication. I’m not sure how I would have survived when phones were the only means of distance communication. At any rate I digress.

At some point earlier this year I’m not sure what changed, but I finally decided I was going to find someone. I picked someone that I found on Craigslist who had a nice website that laid out all her prices that seemed very reasonable and who let me book online. She then no-showed on me twice so she was out. I then tried eliciting feedback from people on Facebook and Twitter. One of my friends got back to me and recommended someone he used to use. We used her for a couple of months, and she did an ok job for more money than I had really wanted to pay but we had someone. I would have kept using her except that she is moving out of state, so obviously could not continue cleaning our house.

The same friend had also given me another name for someone he used to clean his new house recently after we had already hired the first person, so I wound up contacting her. She came for the first time yesterday, and she was fantastic. This is the feeling I was hoping to have with paying someone to clean my house, but really had not with the first person. I came home yesterday and everything was spotless and organized. There is one rack in our kitchen I’m still trying to figure out what she did because I thought I had it decently organized but every inch of it was taken up. Now it’s super neatly organized and there’s a ton of space left on it now. Even my toaster oven, which I had not anticipated her cleaning is gleaming. Even better, aside from yesterday’s initial cleaning, we’ll be paying her less than the person who didn’t do as good of a job and more along the lines of what I had been hoping to pay someone when I started looking. Hopefully she sticks around and doesn’t plan on going anywhere because I will happily pay her to clean my house for a long, long time.