| Tuesday, October 16, 2007 |
| Clean 'n guilty |
When you're about to have dozens of people walk through your home, you want it to be clean. I really wanted to hire a cleaning service to tidy it up for me, but as I've blogged about before, after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Louise Rafkin's Other People's Dirt, I had a real anxiety about asking people to do that job, even if I was paying them. However, I figured it was just the one time, so I did some research and found an employee owned cooperative in Oakland that uses only nontoxic and natural products. Surely I would not be exploiting people if they were business owners, not just workers, right?
I made arrangements to have the more extensive "move in/move out" cleaning done, and my neighbors (whom I will miss living above!!) were kind enough to allow Hobie and me to hang out in their apartment while the cleaning people were at work. I went downstairs with a couple magazines and my laptop, figuring it would take a couple hours, tops. After all, I had done a major decluttering, and made sure the place looked good for our Realtor's photo session on Saturday.
I started to feel progressively guiltier as time passed. The two women worked for three and a half hours. Was it that bad? After I'd paid and tipped them, I looked around the place. I have one of those protective plastic covers on my computer keyboard and I noticed that it had been cleaned of all the crumbs and debris -- geez, I'd always meant to do that myself, but had never gotten around to it. The oven was gleaming inside and out. The wood floors had been washed, the shower doors were grime-free, the stainless steel kitchen sink was polished to within an inch of its life. Thanks to the natural products they'd used, everything smelled nice and fresh, with none of that yucky bleach/chemical odor you usually associate with cleaning services.
Because of my dust allergy, it would be useful for me to have the new home professionally cleaned on a regular basis. This company obviously does fine work and the two young women were cheerful and professional. I just need to get over the guilt that comes with paying someone else to clean up after you.
BlatantCommentWhoring (tm Yellojkt): Do you employ a cleaning service? If so, do you feel weird about it? |
posted by 125records @ 6:08 PM  |
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| 4 Comments: |
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Yes. They are a husband/wife team that came recommended by friends. Since they and my wife are all Vietnamese, they gossip and give each other presents all the time.
It has brought a lot of household harmony.
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We have a woman who comes and cleans for us once every three weeks -- I had a lot of middle-class guilt about it at first, but it has helped our domestic harmony as well. It helps that I too am a freelancer and so know that a lot of people like working fee-for-service rather than on a salary. I pay her at the low end of what I make myself per hour, so I don't feel like I'm exploiting her or anything...
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Barbara Ehrenreich's book had the same effect on me, but it sounds like you found a good and responsible service. If I could find something similar, I'd consider having a professional cleaning done a couple of times a year. But I'm sure I'll keep to my standard, semi-slacky cleaning routine until we move to our next home, whenever that may be.
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We had a self-employed woman who came in twice a month - until she moved to another city to go to nursing school. We just interviewed someone this morning - in this case, one woman who employs two assistants. The possible hangup is we're sorta far away from her home base - but we're crossing our fingers. This one wants to be paid in cash (i.e., the IRS doesn't need to know) and, as I said, is self-employed, so I don't feel weird about it. I tend to think the labor market for people working for themselves is fairer than the one that involves people selling their labor to a medium (i.e., employer) who profits from that position. I read Ehrenreich's book too - and I definitely wouldn't want to hire one of those services. One of my best friend's mothers made a pretty good living cleaning houses on her own (a better one because she invested her earnings), in fact.
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Yes. They are a husband/wife team that came recommended by friends. Since they and my wife are all Vietnamese, they gossip and give each other presents all the time.
It has brought a lot of household harmony.