Keeping the house clean during remodeling: How do you do it?

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A Good Housekeeping article titled A Cleaning Routine for Busy Women may be discriminatory. What about busy men? Do they not deserve a cleaning routine?

But that's beside the point of this post, which is: How do you keep your house clean during remodeling? And if your house is like my house, there are projects going on all the time. So the question is, how do you keep your house clean, period.

The Good Housekeeping piece suggests these strategies: Establish priorities, set time limits, delegate and finish tasks.

But, I've come up with another solution, which I think is a marriage enhancer: Pay an expert to clean your house.

I didn't know how to do this (my own mother was the stay-at-home type) until I did some publishing work with a woman in her Santa Monica home and she had a housekeeper a few days a week. I learned during this time how to talk to a housekeeper, how to stay out of a housekeeper's way so the work can get done and how to show appreciation.

My own program is modest: My friend Candy comes by every other Monday from noon to 5 p.m. and does her magic, for which we pay her $85. I pay one time, and my husband pays the next. She dusts, and does the floors and bathrooms and kitchen, and she even does windows when time permits. Most of all, she has organized our stuff -- luggage in one closet, camping stuff in another. Who knew?

And even though our house is in a constant state of improvement and upheaval, we always feel an emotional lift when Candy has been there. And I don't spend my days thinking I'm supposed to be cleaning the house. That's Candy's job.

So, how does it work for you? How do you keep your house clean, with or without a remodeling project going on?

Comments

[Casey]

Candy is not your friend, she is your slave. You are paying her $20 per hour, out of which she must pay self-employment tax -- which alone is 42.5% after her expenses. In addition to that she must pay health insurance and retirement premiums, or go without, or rely on the generosity of some guy to share his own benefits package with her in thirty years.

You wouldn't tolerate that kind of subzero loss when it comes to your own paycheck, so why do you think it's okay for your "friend"? She's a freakin' doormat to put up with you.

Since I owned a professional cleaning service, I would tell you how to easily prevent the micro dust from migrating throughout your entire house, but you're the kind who likes to take advantage, and you'd just claim my system for your own. Screw you.