Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

We've had a housekeeper come a couple of times.  (I could say cleaning lady,  but "housekeeper" makes me feel like the narrator in Rebecca, where I'm handing off luncheon menus and groundskeeping requests: "A fire in the library tonight, Mrs. Danvers, if you please.")

Everyone I know who has had a housekeeper has told me it's worth every penny and they'd never go without!  Last year we phoned up the cleaning lady who works for a few friends and is by all accounts impeccable (she dusts the door jambs), but she came by to give us an estimate and her initial once-over was going to cost $400.  So we put it off...indefinitely.

Then we visited friends who moved away from California to a ridiculously enormous and fabulous farm house on the East Coast.  I swear it is 10,000 square feet and done up like a high end B&B - just gorgeous.  And the lady of the house revealed that she does not have help cleaning, despite the fact that she has a very full time job outside the home and vacuuming alone takes her two hours.  Her husband intimated that hiring a housekeeper was, in a word, sinful.  (He's a self-reliance kind of guy.)  Part of me was aghast.  Part of me secretly agreed.

And since then I have been unable to justify - morally - hiring help when we have 1600 square feet and two able-bodied adults.  I wondered whether people who have cleaning ladies are really SO ENTHUSIASTIC because their lives are that much improved, or if it's perhaps because they're trying to convince themselves that it's something other than wanton laziness.

But here's the thing.  Ace and I have different concepts of cleanliness.  For him, it equals tidiness - everything in its place, no stuff lying around.  For me, it equals, well, clean.  Mopped floor, scrubbed toilet.  There's no question I am the messy one, and when I have to pick up after myself, I do it.  But I don't do it as much as I should and in those in-between times, when my crap is everywhere, Ace goes quietly crazy.  On the other hand, he doesn't notice the dirt or the scummy tub, so it doesn't occur to him to use a squeegee, say, and when we have guests I feel like it is my burden to spend a weekend mopping and scrubbing and vacuuming.  I know that I'm cleaning for me, but I still feel unduly burdened because it is joint dirt. 

So at our Halloween party, a friend glowed about her cleaning lady and said that she reluctantly took a break when she was between jobs, but as soon as she got her offer letter at a new job, the cleaning lady was the first person she called.

So I got her number.  Setting up our first meeting was confused and hectic because she doesn't speak English but she had an opening that very week.  No turning back!

She comes once a month, so she's been here twice.  The first time, our house had degraded into tornado territory, and I spent hours the night prior picking everything up.  But when we came home that night, the place smelled like roses and I felt the cares of the world slide from my shoulders.  It wasn't just tidy (Ace had been satisfied when we finished the picking up), it was clean.   (When I noticed she'd used almost an entire $8 bottle of Mrs. Meyers' geranium-scented cleaning solution the cheapskate in me had a conniption, but I tried to keep perspective.)

This last time it was less roses, more gas leak (an unlit burner had been left on) so it wasn't quite the arbor of delights, but I had been able to use the night before to spend a little less time picking up and a little more time organizing my desk.  I hope it continues this way, that each time I'll have kept the debris a little more in line than the last time and can make progress on organizational tasks that I've put off for - let's face it - years. 

Oh yeah, and she polishes the teakettle.  We've been making good use of it this fall, what with Sleepytime Tea and hot water bottles.  As mentioned in an earlier post, we didn't turn the heat on until after Thanksgiving.  Ace just got the bill and our gas usage for November was a third that of last year.  Now we just turn it on for a couple of hours when we get home and turn it off when we go to bed.  The house is usually around 56 degrees.

So speaking of my favorite things, I wanted to pass on a tip from my mother.  My mom gives me lots of advice.  I usually pretend to ignore it, just to be difficult, but I also usually take it to heart.  One good recommendation she gave me years ago was CuddlDuds long underwear.  They're now called CuddlSilks.  It's long underwear that is actually quite sheer, so you can wear it under everyday work clothes.  I wear them every day, now.  They're so convenient that I wanted to add a couple to my closet, so I went to the depressing Sears over at the Sad Mall (Sears is the only place I've ever seen them), and they were 50% off!  Now they have a bamboo variety.  They package it up like it's all eco-friendly to use the "replenishable resource" of bamboo!  Because cotton doesn't grow on trees, you know.

(Although, it's my understanding that cotton is a crop that requires lots of resources, pesticides, what have you, that do harm the environment so that 's why you should insist on organic cotton.)   

Let's close this post with the warm woolen mittens.  I got that periodic notice from Skype that I hadn't logged in in a while (IT at work removed it from my computer despite my whining and then my parents moved back from Singapore anyway), and I had to make at least one call or they'd keep my remaining eight Euros.  So I called a long lost friend in England only to discover she'd just gotten some terrible news.  That's neither here nor there, but I've been teaching myself to knit, per Sharon's skill-building imperative, so I used her as the inspiration for my first project: I decided to make my friend (shall we call her Pom?  PomWonderful?) mittens.

I totally made a mitten!  I used a pattern out of the original Stitch n Bitch book, which I got from the library.  (Recommend.)  I should have taken a picture, it was absurd.   It was about a foot long and eight inches wide.  I put my foot in it and considered keeping it for cozy toesies.  But then I tore it apart and started over. 

I know, they don't look remotely professional, but PomWonderful is pretty forgiving.  If I made her wait until I had real skill, she'd be waiting a long time.  Next I'm going to try a matching hat with a cable in it.

Update: I tried starting the hat, but my 9" needle is way too short.  I'll have to buy another pair of needles this weekend so I can work on it over the Christmas holiday.  This so-called frugal hobby is wiping me out on equipment.

I'll be sad to be done with this project.  The fuzzy wuzzy yarn is just too soft.  It's called Sensations Angel Hair, and it's 22% wool so I'm hoping it'll be a little warm. 

Comments

[Vaguely Urban]

I would like to have an hour-long conversation with you regarding each of of the items you cover above, but for now I will just say:
That book? Rebecca? I've never hated a book more.

[7thStreet]

I used to have a cleaning person. They were even on the cut-rate side and I never had an issue with theft or performance, but one day I decided that I'd rather spend $1,500 per year on other things and clean the shower myself every couple weeks. And vacuuming is fun. Haven't looked back... oh, and did I mention I hate tipping. Not the act or expenditure itself, but the determinative part of the process - when, how often, and how much.

[TasterSpoon]

Great. Way to make me doubt myself. That was totally my rationale too. Maybe we'll revisit in 6 months.

And I must say, the once per month visit is not ideal. It's just frequent enough that I won't bother doing any serious cleaning between visits, but it's not frequent enought to keep the floor perpetually clean. Only then you resent the mid-month mopping even more - "WHAT AM I PAYING A CLEANING LADY FOR?!!"

I just figured it was easier to ask her to come more often than to ask her to come less. Maybe we'll end up asking her to come MUCH less often.

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