One of my dirty little secrets is that I have a cleaner. I’m deeply embarrassed about this really but for reasons I can’t explain on the blog, I can’t actually stop having one. It’s a left over of the days when running the business, having lots of home educated children, a house new enough to be worth preserving and being pregnant with a husband who still had a proper job made it all seem perfectly respectable. Now that I’m not particularly gainfully employed, it’s a bit of an indulgence to say the least. You’ll just have to take it from me that I beat myself with a mop about it and.. well, like I said, it’s not something I can actually stop. (I don’t mean I can’t stop because I have a house servant addiction, it’s just.. well… complicated!)
It’s a good job I do to be honest because while I can just about keep my own bedroom tidy (there isn’t much margin for yelling about girl bedrooms if your own looks like a pit of Hades), I’m utterly hopeless about housework. I can’t blame anyone else for this. I’m just rubbish. I don’t see grime at all until it is actually at the ‘tide of dried peas washing round my knees’ stage. I’m oblivious to piles of stuff for the most part, within acceptable limits and utterly unable to see crud in showers, corners, sink edges or the bottom of the fridge. My pain barrier may be low, but my ‘likely to give botulism’ one is particularly high. I credit my kids general good health to the abundance of germs the encounter on a daily basis. So E, who comes for 2 hours a fortnight, keeps things to within a limit that mostly means social services would not remove the children if they popped by.
I honestly have no idea why. My sister cleans her bathroom perfectly adequately and I’m prepared to bet my brother lives in something as clean and trim as a hospital place where people think hygiene is important. I can’t check because he ran away to Australia and I think my house was the last one he stayed in here, but I don’t think that was related to my domestic goddess skills. But somehow I can always find better things to do. I’d like to tell you that while my house is lacking in the finer touches of cleanliness, my hard drive is a paragon of military filing perfection, but it’s not true either. In general, I’m just a person who likes to do things all in one go – housework in a large lump when pregnant (could be a problem going forward), tax return and all the associated books on the 27th January , blog posts in a heap. I’m an all or nothing kind of girl – and when it’s housework, I prefer nothing.
My children will tell you that I sadly don’t extend my slovenliness to my expectations for their room. In fact, I’ve heard my mothers voice a number of times recently as I beg them to tidy up enough that I can see the edges of things. Honestly, I swore I never would…. but I did.
The trouble with living in a predominantly beige house though, as I do thanks to the decorative skills of Eggbox Homes Incorporated, is that grime does build up. The carpet downstairs is looking distinctly muddy these days, having had 6 years of 6 pairs of feet treading all over it. And as we stagger into the dawn of an era where a small boy will want to crawl on said carpet and I will want to bore delight you all with lots of photos of his achievements down there, it has occurred to me that pictures of my carpet are not going to be pretty. I’m not entirely sure that floor cleaner is going to cut the mustard though. I have a horrible feeling that neither my lovely lady with the mop, nor my trusty water emitting vacuum-y thing (known to my friends as an Ady machine, but that’s another story) is going to do the job.
Image credit: uglyhousephotos.com
This is not my carpet. To be honest though, it nearly could be 🙄
So what’s a girl to do? Will Ben love me or hate me if I pull up the carpet and start thinking about laminate floor? Is this just asking for trouble as he turns into a small boy who likes to ‘skid’? Or shall I just attach scrubby pads to his knees, squirt some bubbly stuff on the floor and hope he whips up a lather as he learns to crawl?
Answers on a postcard please….
I also have a cleaning service, weekly or fortnightly depending on my health, and I cannot function without them. And we long ago tore up the carpets and replaced them with laminate, which has the unexpected benefit of being great for indoor scootering and sock “ice skating”. Also it can be kept reasonably hygienic in almost total silence, because the swiffer thing is as easy as a sweeping brush and quiet enough to use when the baby’s asleep. Lighter than the hoover too.
Schools have cleaners, usually. And schools and school-children’s houses both get a lot more “not being trashed” time than mine.
I am going to use that schools have cleaners line forthwith! Guilt begone!
Lucky you is what I say…when hubby wins the lottery the first thing I get is a cleaner. My 7mth (today!) Baby does not like playing second best to housework and is very very good at protesting till he is back where he belongs..on mommys hip 🙂
As for the wooden floor..I believe they actually hold up the development of babys mobility. We have carpet and our baby has been rolling over for months, he commando crawls and can now get up on his hands and knees ready to properly crawl, he also sits up. I know of other babies his age and older who dont do as much as he does and these little ones all live in houses with wooden floors. Have told my mom she has to come to me for visits for the time being as she has wooden floors and I dont feel I can put little one down in case he hurts himself and he quite confidently gets all over the place at home. I would stick with the carpet…polished wooden floors excellent for skidding but not so much rolling and learning to crawl 🙂
Oh that explains why our first walked at nine months and the others were 12 and 11 then! It’s all down to the floor we got between 2 and 3!
It have to say slowing down crawling might be an advantage. Am bad mother 😉
I must be a real failure! I have cleaners who come weekly, even to a brand new house 😉
I am just feeling so much better.
Hmm that was very close to my carpet! Jessica was an extremely puke-y child and she seemed to favour our living room carpet and, after nearly four years of ill treatment, it looked vile. So I got rid of it as could not bear the thought of R pootling around on it and replaced it with karndean which I loved in our kitchen. However, the kitchen floor is a nice grey, dirt concealing slate. The lounge floor appears to have no dirt concealing properties at all and it is a constant battle against the dust bunnies. I do feel tremendous guilt when I see that Reuben learned, at an early age, to fall carefully so as not to knock his head! But, if Ben turns out to be a bum shuffler like Reuben, they do act as quite effective mini vacuum cleaners! Just need to pick them up and dust their bums off in to the bin once in a while 🙂
Fran was like that and our first carpet (a grim grey) really did look like that.
laminate is a nightmare, dust bunny city unless you sweep it everyday! of course I blame the dog…..
xx
It’s almost an ambition of mine to have so little filth on the floors by lunchtime that I care about dust bunnies.
Rofl!
There has to be a reason for all those children though… Domestic servitude 😉
Our wooden floors in Africa were cleaned by skating on them first with polish brushes and then with soft cloths to remove the polish. It seemed to work well and always looked fun too!
That sounds great fun. I could ask hh to bring sb round to try it 😉
I must be a failure too as I have a weekly cleaner who just about keeps the ‘trouble-spots’ (kitchen, bathroom, wc) in my house habitable.
As for laminate – I have to sweep our kitchen and hall twice daily or more. Dust is a nightmare and Lucas loves to perfect his pincer grip on any errant piece of dirt/dust he spies on the floor.
Hm. Better or worse than developing permanently grey knees in all trousers?
Laminate, laminate, laminate! We did ours a couple of years ago and I SO wish we had been able to do it when the children were tiny. Yes, it seems dusty….but that dust and grime is there anyway on a carpet, you just can’t see it. At least when a laminate looks clean, it IS clean. Most of the bits seem to accumulate round the edges anyway – a quick whoosh round the perimeter with a vac once in a while will sort that out…..or just buy Josie and Ben a lovely sweeping brush set and set them to it 😉 And….if someone had told me that laminate would delay the children’s mobility I’d have probably sold my soul to buy it and keep them in one place just a little longer 😉
Yes, that!!!! 😉
I wish I had a cleaner. Steve won’t let me get one, I have threatened it many times!
You so deserve one. He has hill climbing. Make him let you.
I have to say I love my laminate flooring. And I don’t know if there is any evidence re: wooden flooring and development but anecdoteally speaking my son did nothing while we had a carperted house apart from sit, minimal rolling, no crawling, no pulling to standing. The moment we moved in to our house with wooden flooring he was up and off. Odd boy 😉 you would think he’d take advantage of the soft landing at the old place. I also find the wooden floring much easier to keep clean and less hassle. Spill something? Wipe it up – sorted. Only thing is to be careful of scratching. On the subject of housework. I SUCK. Luckily my husband helps out a lot or who knows what the place would look like…
Honestly, this post has been like therapy 🙂
We bought the cheapest laminate we could find precisely so that we didn’t have to be careful of scratching. When all the children are big enough not to build gravel igloos in the dining room etc, we will save up to replace it with something fancier. But probably not carpet, because I love never having to be worried by a spill, ever.
I have a cleaner who does a couple of hours a week in which she cleans bathrooms and vacuums floors. That means all floors need to be at least cleared once a week, which is a good incentive, and it definitely keeps me saner, knowing that I don’t have to spend my limited time at home doing those things. When we went down to one income I thought about giving up our cleaner, but I value her far too much.
Exactly. I can sort and tidy in the time I have but I’d never get to the cleaning bit of it.
If I ever get a “proper” job the first thing I will get is a cleaner. I am a slovenly slob so my husband does all cleaning except the bathroom. He actually enjoys housework though (freak) and positively loves ironing. I told him we could have a much better income if we hired him out but he’s not up for that. I have a cream carpet and its bogging as we say here in Scotland… but with a small refluxy boy who will be starting weaning in a month and a bit (ish) I figure we’ll wait for another 6-8 months and then get a new one. We’ve had it cleaned a few times and it kind of fades out the stains so it all looks like one giant room sized stain…
Lol. We rented a house with a brand new cream carpet. Amelie got out of a nappy and rolled poo into it while I was fixing something and a rabbit did an orange wee. We were charged :/
dark laminate or tiles def get my vote….. you can see the soggy patches rather than finding them with your bare feet…… dark hides the muddy footprints better than light so you don’t have to work so hard to make it look clean
Yes, but you are worse than me 😉
On the development front….when Sophia was little we lived in a house with laminate floors downstairs and carpet in the bedrooms and it didn’t seem to stop her – rolling over at 4 months and crawling at…oh I can’t remember, but cruising by 10. This time living on a boat everywhere is carpeted but the poor boy can’t spend much time on the (very small) floor for fear of his big sister standing on him!! Still, when we visit normal people in houses he seems happy enough rolling onto his side so can’t say this seems to be hindering any development either!
On a boat?!?! Do you have a blog?
Your children won’t care what you do to the floor – it’s just not on their agenda. I only became a neat freak once I left home. Until then my clothes piled up on my chair until it fell down – then I put them away. And cleaner?? I would have to be in the poor house to give up my cleaner!!
I had a cleaner once (oh blessed memory) when I had a toddler, bump & degree & a poor beleaguered husband who was night shifts – it was great!
Now I have older kids instead 😉
One of our flats had all laminate floors except the bedrooms, it was awesome – a quick sweep every night and a mop once a week & it looked so clean and lovely all the time! It certainly didn’t stop Wig & Fluff crawling at 6 months and walking at 12…
Now we have laminate in the kitchen here – love it. It’s so much more practical and hygienic. And sock skating is our family sport.
We have a lot in common!! I too have a cleaner which I call my ‘dirty little secret’… But you know what…I was talking to a friend who has a cleaner and she said she doesn’t spend money on cigerettes, doesn’t drink (well, to excess any way) and so if a cleaner is our only vice then ho hum! Congratulations on becoming a MADS Finalist! I look forward to meeting you in September (not quite sure why but made it in Best Small Business Blog…) Love this post! 🙂