Do you clean for your cleaners?  I thought so.

Last month our friend and cleaning person vacuumed our house for the last time after 10 plus years with us.   She has begun her well-earned retirement.   We will miss her very much but we are happy for her and her family as she enters this new phase of her life.

Fortunately, I was given a recommendation for a replacement by someone with high cleaning standards.  If the potential cleaners were good enough for my friend, they certainly were ok for me.  We set up an appointment so that they could give me a price to clean my house.  In advance of their visit I was zipping around the house at lightning speed picking up, putting away and emptying the dishwasher and wiping the counters.  By the time I was done I was completely exhausted.

When Steve asked me what I was doing and I told him I was cleaning for the cleaners.  His look of incredulity at the absolute idiocy of what I was doing had zero effect on what I was doing.  I was cleaning for the cleaners who were coming to give me a price they would charge to clean our house!!??!!  You would have thought I’d come to my senses.  I did not.

We hired the cleaners and I spent much of Tuesday cleaning for the cleaners who were coming on Wednesday to do a deep clean on our house.  She told me that they always give a house a deep clean on their first visit.  Again, why was I preparing my house for them to super clean it?

Ok, after my second round of complete exhaustion due to my efforts to have the house spic and span before they were going to use Spic and Span on it, I asked myself the obvious question:  WHY?  Did I think they were going to give me a gold star for the sparkling, shiny state of my dirty house?  Or perhaps they would give a discount because they didn’t have to do as much work?  Was I afraid that they would find all of my dirty little secret dusty corners?

As I lay on the couch on the eve of the deep clean, wasted from all of my activity and insane hard work, I pondered the age old question, why do we clean for our cleaners?

The following day the new cleaners completed the job.  Their cars were barely out of the driveway before I began my inspection.  I was in awe.  The house was spotless.  The new cleaners had done a fabulous job.  I had hired a cleaning dream team.  It was a fantastic feeling.  I was so happy.

I wonder if I am going to feel the need to clean for the cleaners prior to their return in two weeks.  I think we all know the answer to that question.