Worth Every Penny

So here's the thing, I'm a pretty cheap frugal person by nature. I hate spending a lot of money for things I know I can buy for less elsewhere or for services I know I could do myself. There have been exceptions to this however, for example, when we moved and hired professional movers. BEST. DECISION. Yes we could have moved ourselves but after hiring professionals I will do whatever I need to in the future to afford that luxury when we move again.

With that said when we first started talking a few weeks ago about hiring a cleaning person to come in maybe once a month I was a bit hesitant. It seemed like a waste of money, after all, we could just clean ourselves. Now let me be clear, we DO clean our house. Obviously we do the day to day type of cleaning to keep the house somewhat presentable. The problem is that we've gotten really bad about keeping up with the deep cleaning i.e. mopping, washing windows, dusting those hard to reach spots.  etc.

We moved into the house at the end of February and I got pregnant at the beginning of April and spent most of my first trimester feeling horrible and now I have little pockets of energy that leave as quickly as they come, so for me, trying to keep up with this has been impossible. And even though Kristian is actually REALLY good at that kind of cleaning (I definitely am not) he's typically busy doing more handy-man/physical labor type of projects around the house. Call me crazy but after he replaces all the deck railing single-handedly I feel bad asking him to mop the kitchen floor.

So we decided to bite the bullet and hire someone. We hired the wife of one of the guys Kristian works with and she actually cleans their office as well. It was important we had someone we knew and trusted since they would be cleaning while we weren't home.

Yesterday was her first day and I have to say I was super impressed when I got home. Granted I've never hired a professional to come clean my house so maybe I had low expectations but she went above and beyond and did things we didn't ask or expect her to do. She even cleaned the cat litter box (which we didn't ask her to do)! Kristian said that alone made her worth the money.

Obviously I expected her to do the basics; vacuum, mop, dust etc. but the whole night I kept finding little surprises of things she had cleaned or organized that I didn't anticipate. It was awesome. Below are a few pictures of some of the fun surprises.

She vacuumed our couch! Look at those lines. I didn't even want to sit on the couch when I got home and mess it up.

In Moxie's crate we keep a towel (in case she has an accident) and a soft blanket which are both usually crumpled up and she folded them neatly. I know Moxie was happy.

And by far my favorite surprise, in all of the bathrooms she folded the end of our toilet paper, hotel style. It really is the little things that make me happy!

So even though we ultimately could have done all of this cleaning ourselves it was so nice to have someone come in and get it done for us. It's just getting too hard for me to do it and Kristian doesn't have the time on top of everything else he has to do around the house. It's also nice to have a "clean slate" so to be speak which makes it easier to do our daily cleaning. The plan is to have her come every three weeks. I wish we could afford every two weeks but we just can't right now.

Do you/have you ever had a professional cleaning person?