Hold up! Why am I cleaning for the cleaners?

I will never forget the first time we decided we could afford to pay someone to clean for us some.  It was life changing, I tell you!  Just a few hours every other week saved my sanity when I finally went back to regular work when Hunter was a toddler.

If you are either a single parent or part of a parent couple both working full-time, how do you possibly keep your house clean without paying someone to help?  If you can't afford it, I am so sorry.  If you can afford it, I really think this expense is right up there with saving for retirement and your kids' college educations.  I would quite seriously buy a smaller, less costly house in order to keep paying someone else to clean.  I would work full time instead of part time.  My list just goes on and on for all the trade-offs I would make (and have happily made) just to outsource that chore.

Maybe, unlike me, you actually like to scrub your bathrooms.  If so, more power to you.  I'd rather spend my weekends driving my kids to activities, spending time with them and my husband, cooking dinner for us, doing laundry (yes!  I like laundry!  But that's an issue for another time...), etc.

There is, however, one big adjustment I've made over the years I've left the heavy cleaning to others.  I used to pretty much clean the house before the cleaners came to clean the house.  Yes, you read that right.  I mean, seriously, every little thing needed picked up and put away.  I would do a quick wipe of the kitchen and bathroom counter tops, make sure the bathrooms weren't, you know, too dirty, and just generally give things a decent once-over in a quick frenzied panic the night before because of course I had no real time for this given I was supposedly paying other people to clean!  Even my daughter was asking why we were cleaning so much when the cleaners were coming?

I don't know what got me over the fear of my house cleaners seeing Darrell's hair forming dust bunnies on the bathroom tile and my kids smears of toothpaste in the sink, but somewhere along the way I realized how much more satisfying it was to see it pretty gunked up before they arrived, and pristine after they left.

Now, as a reformed pre-cleaner, I must admit that I still pick up things in a frenzy before my cleaners come.  After all, I want them to get to the counter tops, floors, and other surfaces they need to scrub.  But, I'm proud to say that all the hair, toothpaste, kitchen splatters, and other assorted yuckiness is now left in their capable hands.  And it feels even better when they walk out the door and it looks so good!

I'm even brave enough to post this actual before and after picture of the kid's bathroom sink: