Ana and her Sisters

Every two weeks something amazing happens at our house. A blue van pulls up in front and people tumble out. Wonderful people who clean our house in a way we could NEVER do ourselves. They make it shine. I've seen it happen many times and I still don't know how they do it. To me, it really is magic. Obviously, we could clean the house ourselves and of course, we have. It's just not the same. No matter how hard I try, I can't get the whole place cleaned at once. I can scrub a bathroom or mop the kitchen floor and then I get distracted or interrupted. To have everything dusted, mopped and vacuumed plus all the sheets changed at one time is amazing. We've talked about it frequently and always come to the same conclusion. These people are consummate professionals and very good at what they do. They make it seem so easy. 

Ana is the brains of the operation. She speaks excellent English and has a wonderful sense of humor. I enjoy talking to her almost as much as I love having the house cleaned. Ana's attention to detail is so great that the first thing she does when she comes in is peel the extra, flaky parts off the garlic heads and throw them out. She Feng Shui's the garlic! And that's only the beginning.  

I have been keeping house since I moved out at seventeen. No moving back home. No dormitory. No leaving a mess for someone else. That's thirty-six years of dropped Cheerios and sticky maple syrup and dog hair in dust bunnies the size of tumbleweed. I've lived with musicians and I've lived with children. I'm here to tell you- there's not much difference. And there's something else I've learned. Children create garbage. Heavy recyclers, the two of us make virtually no trash. We empty our kitchen garbage on principal, not because it's full. In a week we don't fill half a trash can. When the kids were little we could barely squeeze it all in to one garbage can. 

We never had housecleaners when I was growing up. Not once. We kids took turns doing chores, but I'm sure my mother did most of it. The only domestic duty she couldn't master was the ironing. We had a huge ironing basket but it never really got done. In the sixties everything was cotton and wrinkled. I would outgrow clothes while they were waiting in the ironing basket. Once in a while we'd take a load to the "ironing lady". What a treat for my mother. I remember it being a big, old house with piles of laundry everywhere. 

Over the years I've had spurts of domestic help. One woman was sweet but she didn't like to use harsh chemicals so nothing got very clean. Another had immigration problems. I would always go back to thinking the expense wasn't justified and we could do it ourselves. After all, with three daughters to pitch in, how hard could it be? Suffice to say, it was almost always easier to do it myself than enlist the "help". The dishwasher could be unloaded in less time than it took for them to argue over whose turn it was. Calgon, take me away.  

Once I got so fed up with Lana and Allie and their messy room that I threatened to stop giving them an allowance until they cleaned it up. Stupid threat on my part. I stopped paying the allowance but they didn't care and they didn't clean up their room. Eventually they got little jobs and made their own pocket change. That was the end of allowance forever at our house. I have to admit I wasn't very different. Once, when Laura and I shared a room, it was such a pigsty that my mother left a note on my closet door that said, "Shame on you". I don't think that worked, either.

During one of the self-cleaning periods I decided to have a Christmas party. I knew I needed help and tried to hire my neighbor's cleaners. They refused the job. Said the house was too dirty. Talk about depressing! Too dirty for the housecleaners! We did not have the holiday party. A month later Eric had his accident. One of my friends from the tennis club gave us the greatest gift. She got the ladies to kick in and they hired someone to clean the whole house for us. It was incredible. Eric came home from the hospital with multiple open wounds and there was great risk for infection. Not to worry. The house was pristine. That's how we found Ana and her sisters, the miracle workers.    

I have taken care of people for so long. These people take care of me. They always do something extra like organize the linen closet or clean the microwave. Eric loves that they clean the grounds out of the coffee pot. When real estate slowed down I suggested we let them go. Eric wouldn't hear of it. He didn't want to add yet another layer to the economic misery. They still have the job and we get to benefit from it. Now that's a stimulus plan.