Wife Savers

I have a friend who recently was asked if she could houseclean for someone once a week. So she agreed to do it, and last week asked if I would be interested in working with her. So I said sure, what the heck, I'll make a few bucks and it fits nicely into my day while the kids are at school. Although I'll be totally honest, I wasn't sure about how I would feel about cleaning some one else's house. So I thought about that for awhile. I suppose it's because - let's be honest - most of us would automatically look down on someone who is a "housecleaner" for a living. I mean isn't it most people's goal in life to attain a standard of living where you can hire someone else to come and clean your house? Not to actually BE the house cleaner yourself. That's a terribly snobby way to think, but I was just trying play devils advocate with myself and be honest. Okay, so there's that. Then there's the idea of being knee deep (so to speak) in someone else's dirt. Was I okay with that? Well, sure, that's what rubber gloves are for, right?  In the end, I decided that I would go ahead with it, and by the time the big day rolled around I was actually feeling somewhat excited - I was really curious to see how I would feel about the whole thing once I was actually there doing it. Would my cleaning abilities even measure up to my friend's? What if I was really a lousy cleaner, I could potentially be exposing myself and revealing what the state of my own house must be - "clean??? You call that CLEAN???" scenarios were running through my head. Anyway, we walked through the house together after we arrived to decide which areas we needed to concentrate on the most, and divvy up who would do what. Then my friend dropped the bomb - apparently the lady of the house's mother in law was flying in from out of town this very evening to come stay for a visit with them. Suddenly the entire job took on a new meaning. We weren't just cleaning house anymore. We felt akin to super heroes, swooping in at the last minute to save the day. Just call us....the Wife Savers. Because let me tell ya, this was not your ordinary untidy house. This was definitely a cleaning product, clutter challenged home. So we turned up the stereo, donned our rubber gloves and went to work. Over the course of the next three hours we cursed, we scrubbed, we boxed up clutter and we sweat. We sweat a lot - who needs the gym, I'd be in great shape if I did this a few times a week! We actually went so far as to do a little home staging for mom in law - a bag of apples emptied into a bowl and set on a nice and newly uncluttered buffet in the kitchen, couch cushions plumped, you get the picture. And then we did a final walk through, gathered up all our supplies, gave each other a big woohoo! and a high five and drove our tired asses home.
Later on in the evening I was thinking about the job, and I was really amazed at how good I felt about it. I never feel that excited about cleaning my own house. Why not? I suspect it's because I wasn't just working for myself, I was working for someone else, and the whole time we were working we both kept saying things like "oh I just can't wait till they get home and see this, they are going to be so happy!"And they were - they called my friend up and thanked us for everything, and raved about how great everything looked. Oh, and could we please email them a quick note to let them know exactly where we put away all the stuff we packed up - probably so they could look for it without looking like they were looking for it in front of his mother, oops!
Oh, and one more thing. It was nice to get paid too - both with compliments and cash.