House Cleaning

Today will be a new experience for me. We have a cleaning lady coming over to help out. My sister insisted we get someone because with my back right now, I’m unable to get a lot of stuff done. I started to ask her while she was insisting if she would be paying this lady, but I already knew the answer to that.

This reminded me of my last landlady (LL). When I had moved from the trailer park I had talked about earlier, I had found this house in a very small town. It was perfect for me, George and Henry (George’s brother). When I first saw the house it was having a little renovation being done on the bathroom. While it was being done and before I moved in, my LL was asking me what kind of sink and cabinets, and what kind of tile on the floor I wanted. She was willing to change anything I wanted, which was a pleasant surprise after the trailer.

Anyway my LL and I became friends and she would drop by from time to time. She would tell me how I was the best renter she had ever had and how impressed she was on how clean I kept the house and yard. Now my LL and her husband were in their mid 70’s and they weren’t getting around too well. She asked me one time if I could come by her house and help her clean a few things. I said sure and showed up on the appointed day.

They had a modern ranch style house, and she had the house filled with antiques. She told me when I arrived that she has seen how I cleaned my house, so would I do the same for her. So I spent the day vacuuming, waxing/dusting furniture, mopping/waxing tile floors, cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom and scouring all the bathrooms. I think the thing she liked about my cleaning is I would move furniture to vacuum under it, I would clean the entire kitchen to include almost taking down the stove to get to everywhere in and on it. I guess you could say I did what is now called deep cleaning. I finally moved back home to take care of Fmom and for a time after I got here, I would drive the three hours round trip to clean my LL’s house about every two week. After awhile the drive and my health stopped me from doing that.

I haven’t talked to her in a long time, but the last time I did, she said she had gone through four different people to clean her house, but no one did the job I had done. She wanted to know if I could come up and do a job on her house. I told her I would love to, but at this point I was having a hard enough time looking after Fmom and keeping this place clean.

This brings me back to the cleaning lady coming today. I just spent the last hour cleaning and picking up what I could around the house. Since Fmom and I’ve been back from the trip, I haven’t been in any condition to clean around here. It looked like a tornado had come through here and at least now it looks like only a strong wind came by. Since I don’t know the lady coming, I’ll sit and talk with her for awhile and tell her what I expect, and ask what she expects. I used to do that with new people arriving in my office and found that precluded a lot of miscommunication on what the job expectations were. I don’t know if she’ll be a deep cleaning person or a hit and dust person, but I guess I’ll see.