Our normal housekeeper (also neighbor/friend which is not a good situation since you can't make a fuss over too much if you want to live peacefully) is in Sinaloa visiting family. Today is the normal day we pay $1700 ($100) for her to clean the house and sweep the yard.
Well...we decided to give someone else a chance since she's gone and we don't want to go without housekeeping for a whole month. And I do not clean my own house. I had a once a month housekeeper in the USA (all I could afford) and I have a once every 2 weeks housekeeper here in Mexico.
I'm not housewife material. I cook. My mom does the dishes. I provide. My mom does laundry. I do all the driving, my mom does cat litters. And the rest of the housekeeping I pay someone else for. I work 10-12 hours a day and I'm not going to spend 30 minutes cleaning a bathroom when I literally have multiple women competing for the gig.
We figured, let's get a DEEP CLEAN. Let's go all out, because a lot of stuff, like scrubbing my balcony, cleaning the refrigerator, cleaning the windows, are not things our normal housekeeper will do.
Well...as the only gringas in the neighborhood we have multiple neighbors competing for the housekeeping gig. Like the woman who owns the salon at the end of the street (one of three in the neighborhood).
This is the woman who does my mom's pedicures, because my mom can't cut her own toenails and I've been banned from the job after drawing blood too many times. She is always asking if we need other services. She'll drive her to appointments or clean her house, etc.
So, we decided to give her a chance to clean for us while our regular housekeeper is away. I sent her a Whatsapp asking if she wanted to spend 5 hours deep-cleaning our house. She didn't answer. She SHOWED UP AT THE DOOR.
She was like: I have not had a customer for two damn days and I have four kids (one new born).
Imagine having a salon and not having ANY customers a whole day. That's regularly the situation for them. People can't afford $400 ($25usd) for a pedicure or $600 ($38) for a manicure, etc. She gets a few appointments a week, and it's enough, but it's tough.
There are three salons in walking distance and the two that do pedicures will approach my mom when they see her walking to ask if she needs one. (We were taking turns between the two of them, but one of them was willing to walk to our house and walk my mom to the salon and then walk her home because she gets lost, she won the monthly pedicure gig.)
The deep cleaned the whole house for 5 hours including cutting the vines choking the usability of my balcony. It was a huge job and she brought her teenage son to help.
House is sparkling clean. Refrigerator sparkling and organized. Microwave cleaned. Everything scrubbed. We definitely need to do this at least once a year. @-@
She work hard and her son do what she asked without talking back or refuse. I know her and she even did my laundry but we run out of water and could not finish, I'll probably hang it inside because is cloudy and it may rain.
ReplyDeleteRan out of water???
ReplyDeleteThe city only turns on water a few days a week and our cisterns went dry because our pump was clogged. We usually always have water due to our 3 cisterns, but it was a pump problem.
DeleteWe do a deep clean at least once a year. Also trying to cut down on water usage. I have a device installed that measures water consumption among other things it does. Last week we used 3134 gallons of water. Trying to bring it down to 2800. Wonder wear most of that water goes?
ReplyDeleteWOW! How can you possibly use that much water?! Are you watering grass?
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