house cleaning with a house

It should come as no surprise that taking care of a house is a lot more work than taking care of a one thousandishish square foot apartment.  Yet, I am still occasionally taken aback.

While I reserve the right to change my mind in the future, I'm not ready to hire a house cleaner, even though I heard that the Joneses have one.  My objections stem from a combination of frugality, pride and ideology.

The idea that I can do something productive that is not on a computer appeals to me.  Even though it isn’t much exercise, I feel called to fight against the dystopian future where we automate everything except eating and then spend grudging hours on the treadmill so that our bodies continue to function.  Or perhaps that is already the present?

One of my first jobs as a kid was cleaning houses and I found it to be fairly enjoyable.  I have fond memories of vacuuming up some pretty gnarly places such as the ceiling of a very old Irish farmhouse I stayed in.  Cleaning is satisfying, unlike straightening up, which is onerously full of sidetracks, and in our house, stair climbing.

Does this mean our house is dirtier than we’d like?  Absolutely.  There are still floors in our house that have *never* been mopped and  vestiges of construction dust, since we were so crunched for time that there was no post-construction deep clean before we moved in.

Though we’ve long held a preference for non-carpeted floors, this is the first time we had them.  With wood floors, when the windows are wide open in the heat, the dust bunnies leap about athletically in the breeze.  To combat this herd, we now have three vacuums.  The first is a backpack vacuum, which is quite necessary with all the stairs, the second is a shopvac for the car and all the projects on our list and the third is our new Roomba.

Cleaning robots like the Roomba and our beloved Cat Genie litter box somehow don’t compromise my values like a hired person would. 

Disclaimer: I fully recognize the hypocrisy of this D.I.Y. post, considering the amount of cleaning help (mostly laundry and dishes) our parents do while watching D.