Humerous Housecleaning Horror Stories

So what I'm grappling with recently is whether or not to find another housekeeper. I've used services in the past who send a crew, I've used a husband/wife team, and I've used an individual. The husband and wife lasted the longest (almost three years) but I, in fact, grew fond of them and it seems they saw it as an opening to slack off. When it reached the point where I was cleaning up after them every week instead of vice versa, it just started to seem silly.

My funniest housekeeping story is this one though. The woman named Ethel. I came home unexpectedly once when she was here, and caught her "resting" on the couch. She jumped a foot and said she was just taking a little break. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was a pretty noisy break, what with the snoring and all. Nor did I mention the TV being turned on, showing her favorite soap opera. I did let her know I wouldn't be needing her anymore, paid her, and that was that. Until...

A few months later Frank and I bought a new couch. We had to tip the old one on its side to get it through the door, and when we did we found, shoved into the underneath part, a half empty bottle of scotch and a half empty pack of Dentyn gum. Uh-huh...

My most recent experience was odd from the beginning. In the past I had always noticed how nice the house smells after it has been professionally cleaned. Something about the products used, I imagine. But this time, hmmm.... there was no pleasant fragrance lingering in the air to assure me my money was being well spent. "She's probably using things that are scent-free... better for my allergies, " I rationalized. I also missed the nice squeaky clean feel of the freshly mopped floor on my bare feet. "Just a difference in the product," I assumed. She had, after all, come highly recommended. (Thinking back, so had Ethel!)

Then one day when this woman had (supposedly) finished mopping the hallway, she neglected to put the throw rug back in place. It was draped over a piece of exercise equipment nearby, with the rubberized back showing I noticed marks that indicated my precious kitty cat had been using it as a peeing place, so I put it in the washer, and thought, "I wonder how long that's been going on." I checked the floor to see if there was any nasty smell there, and sure enough, it smelled to high heaven. "Odd," I thought, since it had just been mopped. Supposedly.

So I grabbed an old towel and rubbed at it with a bit of 409. The rag came away downright dirty. I tried a spot in the living room. Dirty. The kitchen. Dirty. That was when I realized, in retrospect, that not only was this house cleaner not using cleaning product, what she was using was an old fashioned string mop and a bucket of water. With, apparently, nothing else in it. She was just smearing dirty water around, is what she was doing. And getting paid for it.

I had never checked up on her before, just assumed she was doing her job. This time, I decided to have a look. Went to the spare bedroom and found... no scotch or gum, but dust, untouched. Just resting in its place... on every flat surface. The waste can had been emptied, but tiny threads were still on the carpet where I had done some sewing a few days before. She hadn't even vacuumed. Another housekeeper down the tube, with pay check in hand. Her last pay check from me!

That was a year or so ago, and I've been doing my own house cleaning since then. Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy housecleaning. Thing is, I don't have the energy I had in my younger years, so what used to take me hours, now takes days. And totally wears me out. Our place is an indoor/outdoor arrangement, with a cat and a dog that thoroughly enjoy it along with us -- so it's not easy keep up with the signs of life. Okay, it's impossible, considering I'm not as young as I used to be -- "No spring chic" as my brother likes to put it. And I do have other demands placed upon me that usually keep me tethered to my computer or, on a good day, deep into a good book or riding atop my horse.

So here's the dilemma: Do I trust another person or crew? Or do I save my money and clean my own house? It's not that I mind taking another chance at hiring someone, but what I do want to avoid is the awkward letting go of that someone when the arrangement doesn't work out. Ever notice how starting a relationship is so much easier than ending one?

Kind of like how easy it is to gain weight, and how hard it is to lose it. But that's a blog for another day...