Christopher Street

Okay, so maybe the roses were a little much

So, I mentioned yesterday that I have a new housekeeper. She started yesterday, and so yesterday cleaned my house for the first time.

Now, let me say a couple things. First, I don't clean. When I do, it's usually not well. However, I recently had a party for my husband's birthday, and I hired *professional* cleaners to come and clean--TWICE--in the two weeks before the party.

Granted, there was a party after the cleaning, and that party likely caused the house to have *some* dirt that wasn't there immediately post-cleaning. But still. I still paid these *professional* cleaners OVER THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS to clean my house. Twice.

So, the new housekeeper comes yesterday, and she cleans.

And cleans.

And cleans.

And cleans.

She cleaned, non-stop, for 6 and 1/2 hours. SIX AND A HALF HOURS. She spent SIX and ONE HALF hours, cleaning a house that had been professionally cleaned twice already in the past three weeks.

I know that I seem like a broken record here...but the mind boggles.

And she found dirt. Oh, yes, she did. 14 filthy rags worth of dirt. Yes, I counted them as they went into the washing machine last night. 14. Filthy. Rags. I believe that she may have cleaned things that have never been cleaned, all the way back to the dawn of time. It's possible that she slid through a wormhole and cleaned the Ark. The messy rooms, the ones with the goats.

She also did things that have left me a bit gobsmacked. To wit:

5. She removed the bottom cushions from the sofa and the chair and vacuumed under them. I know this because she flipped the cushions (one side has a small stain), and because she retrieved 5 packages of rolaids soft chews from the chair. Score! (I know that that's where they came from, because I vaguely remember one night looking for the remote in the chair cushions, and finding a package of rolaids and thinking...hmmm...there are rolaids in the chair. That's interesting. Of course, being me, I put them back.)

4. She very carefully organized the basket in the guest bathroom. This is the basket that holds soaps and lotions liberated from hotels all over the country. It's a bit of a hot mess, and I just keep getting more soaps...but she very carefully extricated the body lotions, and lined them up next to the basket, and then reorganized what was left. Extraordinary.

3. She left the cats' water cup alone. I was concerned about this, because to the untrained eye, it just looks like a purple plastic cup sitting in the bedroom. But it is the only thing that Zoe ever wants to drink out of. We call it the vessel, as in "the human will fill the vessel with the liquid now." If I were cleaning my house, I would have thrown it away. I was prepared for her to throw it away. I do have other plastic cups that I had prepared to push into service. But she must have picked it up, vacuumed, and then replaced it. She must have animals.

2. She cleaned my hairbrush. I know. I can't actually wrap my mind around that one either.

1. On the toilet paper rolls, she made roses. Out of the end sheets. Of toilet paper. Roses. On my toilet paper. On the three active rolls in the three bathrooms, and also on the two spare rolls in the guest bath.

Okay, so maybe the roses were a little much. :)

Posted by Lori at April 15, 2009 9:04 PM | TrackBack