I Hired A Cleaner. How Middle Class Am I?

Recently we hired a cleaner. It's something that I have wanted to do for the last few years for several reasons, the first being that I hate cleaning.

No, seriously I mean I really hate it. When I was younger my sister and I, along with my Mum would clean our home from top to bottom, we'd wash the ornaments, we'd wipe over the baseboards, we'd polish, vacuum, mop, scrub, dust and organise... it was a lot.

The benefit was that I got good at cleaning. Really good. My sister and I actually had a job cleaning an elderly neighbour's house each week, as well as doing our chores at home each Saturday morning, and despite the money and the delight we had with the two neighbours, I still hated it.

Actually, do you know what? It doesn't matter what the other reasons are. The fact that I hate cleaning is enough for the reasons why I felt I wanted to hire a cleaner.

The point is, I could afford it, and I decided it would benefit me and my family.

So I hired a cleaner.

Of course, I did the typical thing that everybody does when they hire a cleaner.

I cleaned.

I spent the week before cleaning the house from top to bottom, scrubbing surfaces that hadn't been scrubbed in... well, a long time and then pretending I hadn't.

When the cleaner arrived that first morning, I gave a quick tour of my home, explaining the areas that I would like them to concentrate on, where different things were stored that they may need and basically gave them free rein on what they did and when. I didn't care what they did each week, I didn't care what day they did it on, what I did care about was that eventually it got done, without me having to do it.

That first day coming home, the house smelt clean.

It looked clean.

It was clean.

As time went on, we've come to realise the difference that having someone actually clean your home makes.

Yes, we still wipe up after ourselves, wash the cat bowls, empty bins, put a load or twelve of washing on, but those small jobs that you always mean to do but never do are being done. Skirting boards are wiped over, light switches are wiped, appliances are cleaned and dusted, polished surfaces are polished... greasy things aren't greasy, the bottom of drawers don't have little bits of debris in them. We can see out of the windows, and doors don't have fingermarks on them.

Sometimes we'll come home and immediately readjust where certain appliances and items are kept because our cleaner has put them where they make sense to them... but more often than not i's a few days later when we reach for something and it isn't where we expect it to be!

It has made a HUGE difference to our lives, and I can't believe we didn't do it sooner.