Cleaning my house sometimes feels like an exercise in futility. Benjamin Franklin wrote that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. I would humbly like to add a third: that a dog will track muddy pawprints across a freshly mopped floor.
Courtesy of the author
Growing up in a blue-collar family, I never considered paying someone to clean my home once I had a place of my own. My mother cleaned our house herself, and I learned to do the same at a young age.
From apartments to a starter home with my husband to our second home with kids, my husband and I handled all of the cleaning ourselves. And while I didn’t love the work of keeping a home clean, I did love having a partner who shared the workload.
My weekends were filled with chores
When we moved to a larger home to accommodate two active school-age children, several pets, and a dedicated home office, I realized that our weekends had become an endless rotation of chores. There was vacuuming and mopping, bathrooms to scrub, surfaces to dust, and floors to clean. Not to mention laundry. So. Much. Laundry.
By the time we finished what had to get done, there wasn’t much of the weekend left for the things we actually wanted to do. So I made the unilateral decision to try a cleaning service.
Courtesy of the author
That first visit felt embarrassingly extravagant. I remember the strange combination of guilt and relief that came from watching two people do something I had always assumed I should be doing myself. Of course, I spent a good couple of hours “pre-cleaning” so the cleaning team wouldn’t think we were slobs. But when they left, and the house was clean without us having spent an entire weekend making it that way, I understood the appeal. We decided we could budget for a twice-monthly service.
We couldn’t afford a cleaning service before
That doesn’t mean we’ve always been able to afford it. For most of our marriage, a cleaning service simply wasn’t realistic. Even now, I have to balance how often I’d like the cleaners to come with what I’m comfortable spending. Twice a month works for us right now, but I know that could change.
For now, the cleaners come twice a month, with a deeper cleaning once or twice a year. We still handle laundry, cooking, dishes, and everyday cleanup — including muddy-footed dogs. The cleaners mainly tackle the jobs that eat up the most time: vacuuming and mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, and dusting and wiping down surfaces, including the many, many bookshelves throughout the house. With two dogs, a cat, and two teenagers, our house will never be spotless, but starting with a clean slate every 14 days makes everything else much easier to keep up with.
There’s also an unexpected benefit to having cleaners come in twice a month. I spend about an hour decluttering before the cleaners arrive because there’s no point in paying someone to clean around counter clutter, piles of mail, and whatever else has accumulated over two weeks. It’s not exactly relaxing, but it’s an effective deadline. Knowing they’re coming also makes me more likely to put things away throughout the week, so the house stays reasonably presentable between visits.
The hardest part was accepting the cost. At first, I mentally categorized the expense alongside spa treatments or expensive dinners — nice to have, but certainly not necessary. One of the easiest trade-offs for me was working from home more often instead of going to a coffee shop five days a week and spending almost $20 on coffee and a pastry. Having a clean, relatively decluttered house also makes me want to spend more time at home, which feels like a bonus.
More importantly, we shifted our thinking about what we were actually paying for. We weren’t simply paying for clean floors and bathrooms, we were getting back the hours we used to spend cleaning them — and we were getting some mental space. There’s always something else to clean, wash, organize, or put away, and outsourcing some of that work makes the list feel more manageable.
A few years from now, when our kids are out of the house, things may look different. There will be fewer dishes, less laundry, less clutter, and fewer rooms to clean. Maybe we’ll downsize and discover that a smaller house is easier to keep clean. (Though I doubt it!) Or we might decide that the time we save is still worth the expense of hiring a cleaning service.
All I know for certain is that I’d rather spend a Saturday morning having coffee with my husband, hanging out with my family, or reading a book than spending those hours cleaning. The house will get dirty, it always does. But for now, at least, I don’t spend every weekend cleaning it.
