I MISS MY BETTER LIFE MAIDS
Like many of you, I rely on Better Life Maids to help me keep a clean and healthy home. And as we wrap up week one of the Stay at Home Order during the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak, I am juggling all the cleaning and housework, with working from home, online/homeschooling, and a curious, sweet, and shedding golden retriever named Simba who is loving all the extra time with his humans.
Better Life Maids is still planning a reopen date of April 20th. But will continue to monitor the situation as it unfolds. Our first priority is to the safety and health of our clients. We believe our safety protocols are industry-leading, but in an abundance of caution, we have decided that even though we fell under the category of essential services, we needed to step back. We will take this time to make sure that we have the very best cleaning processes and safety procedures in place and provide additional training and resources to our staff.
Maybe I am more aware this week of the accumulating messes and the constant battle against clutter. And I am certainly noticing that Simba has gone into full seasonal shed mode. I am acutely aware of how much I have come to rely on my weekly visits from Better Life Maids. I have the pleasure of having all of the training for new Better Life Maids happen in my home. Not only do I benefit from a clean and healthy home each week, but I get to know each of them personally in their first days on the job.
But this week I am back at cleaning my own house, clearing the clutter, vacuuming and edging, and fighting a constant battle against Simba’s fur. And what I have realized this week is really how much of a blessing my cleanings are each week and how much I already miss them. In what seems to take them no time to do, they can clean my house from top to bottom in a couple of hours. While it seems like a constant battle for me as I stop and start and being interrupted.
So I am taking a page from my 95-year-old grandmother’s playbook for these next couple of weeks. “Do one thing every day”. That’s it. Whether it’s to run the vacuum one day and mop the next. Or clean one bathroom from top to bottom. After a few days, things start to come together.
One more tip that is helping us. Get everyone in on the act. If your kids are home from school, now is a great time to get them to pitch in. We call it family systems. They are rules and processes that help our house run. Now more than ever they are important. One of the rules we have always had is that you can’t be excused from the table until you have made three trips to clear the table. Well, most of the time they just end up doing them all without even being asked. It just becomes part of the systems that keep your house in order.
I am also kind of a stickler on phones and my kids. None of my kids (even my 13-year-old) has their own phone. My 5-year-old was crying that she was bored and didn’t have anything to do the other day, so instead of a phone, I gave her a vacuum. And before long my 9-year-old son was fighting with her to take turns on vacuuming the house. I may need to bring home another vacuum so they can do it at the same time. Double the work output:).
At dinner, we always ask the kids what was the favorite part of their day. My youngest shared that “Vacuuming was my favorite”. And to think we still buy our kids toys. Maybe tomorrow I will teach them to dust.
Also here is another cleaning primer for cleaning the kitchen. We will keep posting these over the next couple of weeks.