I'm a stay-at-home mom [1], and I have a cleaning lady. I say this with extreme gratitude and no shame whatsoever. The truth is, paying for someone else to clean my house [2] every two weeks is the best money I spend. Sure, I could do all the tasks I pay my cleaning lady to do, but delegating keeping our bathrooms tidy and our floors crumb-free has taken away so much of my stress that I can't imagine going back to the way it was before I hired her.
I started using a cleaning lady when I was pregnant [3] with my fourth child. Until that point, I always did all the mopping, dusting, vacuuming, and polishing in our house. When I became too big to comfortably scrub the tubs or drag our vacuum up and down the stairs, I decided to hire out. At first, I felt a little weird about it, since I don't work full-time and I had time to clean [4] while the kids were at school, no matter how disagreeable it was to my ever-growing belly. But when a professional stepped in, my life changed forever. Gone was the anxiety I felt [5] when I knew I had to finish cleaning the house before preschool pickup or in between a doctor's appointment and swim practice [6]. No longer was I almost literally breaking my aching back to disinfect toilets. When the cleaning lady left, I took a step back to admire her work and vowed to remain her customer for as long as she'd have me.
Now that my son is here, I find having a cleaning lady even more invaluable. I already do a ton of household tasks one-handed, from folding laundry to emptying the dishwasher. It's a huge relief when she arrives to take on some of the burden of manageing a household with six people living in it. Honestly, other than my husband, she's the only person who helps me on a regular basis. We don't live close to family [8], and I'm not yet comfortable leaving my baby with a sitter. After a long day of breastfeeding an infant, keeping up with laundry, running three other kids to every activity under the sun, meal prepping [9], and homework coaching, I'm most in love with being able to rely on someone to take care of my needs for a change. And in this case, those needs include getting old chunks of toothpaste off our sinks and wiping down dusty picture frames.
I'm sure some working parents would say that a stay-at-home mom [10] having a cleaning lady is an indulgence, not a need, since I am home. And I bow down to worship parents who work full-time and still find the time to keep up with housework. I honestly don't know how you do it. I know how lucky I am to be able to afford help, and it really is a lifesaver. I'm far less stressed and therefore a better wife and mother because I recognise I need help in this area. Call it the ultimate act of self-care [11]!