The pros and cons of cleaning my own home

So, as you all probably know, we recently let go of our monthly cleaning service. The cleanliness of my house has taken a major hit. But there are some unexpected up-sides. Here are some of the pros and cons of cleaning one’s own home.

Pro: The money. We are saving $120 or so a month by dropping the cleaning service. This is the only pro we considered when deciding to make the switch.

Con: The house is never clean all at once. If the bathrooms are clean, the kitchen is dirty. If the living room is clean, the laundry didn’t get done. Something always has to give. I miss the evening after the cleaning service had been there, when the whole house was clean for a few blessed hours.

Pro: When something is dirty and bugging me, I just clean it right away rather than waiting for the cleaning people and having to look at it for a week or whatever.

Con: When something is dirty and bugging me, I have to clean it myself.

Pro: No late-night scramble to tidy the night before. No fighting with the kids to keep the house tidy all day.

Con: The house is never tidy.

Pro: Things that I thought were permanently stained are now clean. (e.g., curry stains in the kitchen sink, and that rusty ring in the toilets from the time, a couple of years ago, when we replaced our well pump and it pumped iron sludge through the house). It turns out that Comet and arm-aching, finger-bleeding scrubbing will actually get those things clean.

Con: Cracked hands and completely wasted cuticles. Note to self: Buy some of those housewifey glove thingies. They make them for a reason. Put on a garter belt and some heels and pretend it’s a fetish thing if you must to maintain your street cred, but for the love of God, woman, protect your hands next time you’re Comet-scrubbing something for 45 minutes.

Pro: Now that cleaning is part of my job description, I clean things like the inside of the fridge and inside the light fixtures, tasks no one was doing before.

Con: Having to know and see just how many dead stinkbugs have been slowly mummifying in the light fixtures. Holy f-ing crap.

Pro: Not having to keep the kids from walking across freshly mopped floors.

Con: The kids’ room will never be clean again, because I clean when they are asleep.

Pro: Our crap is not randomly moved around, placed in random piles, or hidden tidied away in drawers.

Con: We still can't find our crap, because it is buried under yet more of our crap.

Pro: When friends talk about people with money who have nannies and house cleaners, I no longer have to hold my tongue. Now I can join in the chorus of, “Yeah, THOSE people! What do they do all day? Eat bon-bons?”

Con: I would love to be one of those people and eat more bon-bons.