Too Guilty to Have a Cleaning Lady? This Woman Was by Martha Rosenberg
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Even though cleaning is an early, almost sacred gender ritual we learn from Mom, like sons learn to throw, women hate
it. We say we're too busy, our family's too sloppy and no one helps, cleaning products are toxic, the house just gets
messy again anyway, but the truth is: we'd rather do the backyard dog poop patrol than housework.
Of course, the solution husbands and family offer -- "Don't do it; who cares?" -- won't work. Unidentified food objects
in the refrigerator -- UFOs -- and mold on the shower curtain are fine for bachelors and college kids. But we are grown
women.
You'd think women who can afford to hire a cleaning lady would have the housework problem solved. But that's not what
happened to Julie, a 35-year-old advertising executive in Phoenix.
She spent her first weeks with a cleaning lady proving how much she didn't need her. She cleaned up before her to not offend her with a big mess…and not appear the sloth.
"I left her with nothing to do so she organized my books in the Dewey decimal system (they were already dusted) and
repotted my plants," says Julie. "But I was so conflicted about having a cleaning lady, I complained about how she
favored light jobs even though I was giving them to her. I was nuts."
After precleaning for the cleaning lady Julie arrived at cocleaning to mitigate her guilt. "Brillo buddies," as she called it, was meant to convey I'm not trying lazy, an elitist or trying to shirk my cleaning duties, I just need a partner but it didn't work.
"I'd say to her, 'why don't you vacuum the living room and I'll start on the bathroom,'" says Julie "and hoped she'd
say, 'no; I'll do the bathroom,' like a mind reader or a shrink…which I clearly needed."
Nor was there a graceful exit from cocleaning, Julie discovered.
"I began to feel guilty for being in my robe when she arrived and not wanting to pitch in," says Julie. "So I actually
started hiding from her and leaving notes."
And then there was the quality of the housework itself. Julie couldn't bring herself to check, correct or even direct a
cleaning job, because of the guilt of farming out chores Mom had raised her to do. So she began writing notes hoping they would be more persuasive.
"I'd leave what I thought were clearly written instructions and I'd depart for the day," says Julie. "I actually thought
the house would be immaculate when I got home. I don't think she even read the notes. They were in the unemptied trash"
Then Julie started leaving what she believed were clear signals.
"I pulled one corner of the bed sheet off to imply, change the linen," she says. But the cleaning lady pulled the corner back up again. "Did she think I was halfway through putting on clean linen myself and 'gave out' at the last corner?"
Julie would leave sticky, used cereal bowls and juice glasses in the dishwasher to imply run a load and they would end up put away in the cupboards as if they were clean.
She'd unzip the upright vacuum cleaner to imply change the bag and the cleaning lady would zip it up again until finally, one day, the bag actually exploded.
While Julie was cleaning up six months of vacuum cleaner debris, her husband remarked, "you're cleaning up before the cleaning lady, with her and after her! Why do you even have a cleaning lady?"
And of course, he was right.
ENDS