About three weeks ago, I reached my boiling point. My house, my life, and my kids were a total mess. Each night, after I tucked their sweet little faces into bed, I'd come back downstairs and begin picking up the remnants of the days activities. I had long ago given up and stopped picking up throughout the day since that usually resulted in a cranky mama and an unhappy toddler.
So I hired a cleaning service. I did my research, and searched through various companies on Facebook, being careful to look for recommendations and high reviews. After pouring over my laptop for a few hours, I reached out to a few of the top contenders. One was overpriced, another was slow to return my messages, and the third got my business.
We set a date, and that date was today. Last night, I put away as much clutter as I could and straightened up what was left before I went to bed. I woke up this morning feeling excited. After the cleaners arrived, I packed up the kids and headed over to a friends house for a playdate and to let the magic cleaning fairies undo all the built up dirt and grime that I'd neglected since the kids were born.
I got a text from said fairies and started the trek home eager to relax in a spotless home.
What I saw when I got home was not entirely what I envisioned. The walls and baseboards were still covered in sticky fingerprints and splashes from tipped over sippy cups. Handprints still gripped the bannisters. A few surfaces hadn't been graced with a feather duster or a cloth. The floors had definitely been vacuumed, but they didn't look like they had been washed. However, the bathrooms shined!
As disappointed as I was, it was still nice to come home to a somewhat tidier home.
But part of me is still a little frustrated. I had three ladies working on my home for three hours. That equals nine hours of work. And from my experience, I could have done a much better and thorough job in those nine hours than what I saw today.
But I'm beat. I'm tired from chasing around a toddler and hanging on to a high-needs baby all day every day. I'm exhausted from organizing everything from dental visits to coordinating home renovations. I'm sick of running to the grocery store multiple times a week with a kid under each arm. I hired a cleaning company to help take some of the weight off my shoulders, and I don't think that that's what it did.
I guess what I should have done was hire a babysitter to take the kids for nine hours and just spent that time cleaning my home the way I want it to be cleaned.
The cleaning crew will be back in two weeks to do the walls and anything else they didn't get to this time around, so we'll see if things improve. If not, I hire a babysitter instead.