Clean Up Your Own Clutter!

I remember an experience as a child where I overheard someone saying that they needed to go home

and clean so that their cleaning lady could come the next day.

Growing up in a single-parent household and always struggling to get by, I had often dreamed of having a housekeeper to help us keep up on the chores.  Hearing that this person needed to clean so that the CLEANING lady could come puzzled me.  Why would someone pay to have their house cleaned if they were just going to do it themselves?  Why would they clean their own house, if they were going to pay someone else to do it.  I wondered if they did it to keep up appearances or something.  I thought it was weird, but I soon forgot about it.

Now that I am cleaning my mom's house twice per month, I remembered my confusion as a youth and now I understand.

Housekeepers generally DO NOT clean up your clutter.  They come in once per week (or once every couple of weeks) to clean your mirrors, wipe off counters, dust shelves/ picture frames/ knick knacks, scrub sinks, clean toilets, vacuum the house, empty the trash cans, sweep and mop bathroom and kitchen floors, etc.  They need you to clean up your own clutter so that they can do their jobs properly.  They don't live there.  They don't know where you keep your stuff.  They don't want to interrupt your projects that you started and didn't finish.  They won't sort through your mail.  If you leave your clutter out, they will simply dust, wipe or vacuum around your clutter.

I have not lived with my mom for about 10 years.  My mom is not the sort of person to leave things the way they are.  She is constantly re-arranging the furniture in different rooms, switching the function of certain rooms (switching her office and the kid's play room), reorganizing her dishes, remodeling her house, etc.  Even being her daughter, I don't know where everything goes in her house.  Even as her daughter, I would never sort through her mail.  A paid housekeeper definitely wouldn't do that either.

Even though her house is medium sized (4br, 2.5 bath, living room, family room, kitchen), it usually takes me about FOUR HOURS to clean.  I am lucky that she has cleaned up most of her clutter by the time I get there.  As her daughter, I would help my mom clean her clutter if she needed it, but it would take me much longer to clean her house.

This is NOT my house.  My house isn't THIS dirty... yet

BUT I have a confession to make.  Time to air out the dirty laundry:  My house is a MESS!  I go home to MY dirty house, and I want to cry.  It seems the more that I clean my mom's house, the less I clean my own.  I live with my husband, two dogs, and a cat.  We don't even have kids!  It seems like all we do is move our clutter around.  As soon as we get one area cleaned, it is almost instantly dirty again.  I don't remember the last time we wiped the mirrors and counters, cleaned the toilets, etc.  How did my house get so messy?  LIFE GOT IN THE WAY.  My husband and I have been struggling financially for the last year.  We have been busy working multiple jobs, letting our stuff fall wherever it lands and not moving it until we need it again, letting the mail pile up, letting the dirty clothes pile up, not folding the clean clothes, etc.  I am drowning in my own clutter!

I still dream about hiring a housekeeper but 1) we are broke and we don't have the money, and 2) we have too much clutter in the way.

I am usually a clean freak.  I like my home to be clean and in order.  I enjoy watching Clean House.  I recently realized that my house was nearly as messy as some of the homes featured on the show.  I keep hoping Niecy Nash will show up at my house ANY MINUTE.  But that's enough of my ranting about my dirty house.  I thought I would have much more time to clean and get my affairs in order when I finished school, but I was WRONG!  Oh well!  That's life.  I will just have to find the time to clean my own house.

If you have ever wondered why people would clean their house so that their cleaning lady can come... now you know.  AND if I ever become rich enough to hire a housekeeper, don't judge me if I say I need to clean my house so the cleaning lady can come.

The Truth About WakeUpNow

WakeUpNow is not for everyone.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that it will be easy money.  It's not.  It requires hard work, dedication, and time.

I signed up for WakeUp now in June 2013.  I hoped that it would help me save me money, and make a little extra money while I was finishing school and building up my other business The Peshell Academy of Music.  At first, I was very gung-ho about WakeUpNow.  I loved the free offers, I loved the cell phone discount, I LOVED taxbot.  I liked the discounts that I was getting at restaurants.  I was excited to join the vacation club because of the deals (but I was waiting until I reached Founder 3 to sign up for vacation club because it costs an extra one-time fee).  I was excited to share this program because of all the ways WakeUpNow helps you to save money, manage money, and make money.  I did what I could to "be a product of the product" and share what I had found, but I didn't have much success.

In August, I organized an open house to chat with my friends and family about WakeUpNow.  My mentor and others in our upline were there, and we ordered pizza.  Many of my friends and family said that they would be there, but NONE of them showed up.

In September, the floor fell out from underneath me.  I had started my last semester of college, I was having some pretty serious health problems, and my husband lost his job.


I was tired all of the time and I felt stretched too thin.  I was struggling to keep up in school and fulfill my other commitments.  I didn't have much time to spend on WakeUpNow, and I started to get discouraged.  I fell into traps about how to talk to people about WakeUpNow.  Those that I talked to were put off by the similarities to matrix level marketing because of all of the other MLM schemes and sales parties that they had already been introduced to over the years.  They didn't take the time to realize that WakeUpNow is different.

According to the information on the WakeUpNow website, once you have three people signed up underneath you, your monthly membership is free (your rank is D3 or Director 3- three and it's free).  Once your three people each have three people, you earn an average commission check of $600 per month (your rank is F3 or Founder 3).  Originally I thought that I would see if these two promises are true, but I can't even get to D3!

My WakeUpNow mentor heard of some of the problems that I was facing and offered to call some of my contacts for me.  He asked me to make a list of 25 people who I thought would be interested, and 25 people who might not be interested.  I submitted the list of 50 people to him, and he started calling them for me.  Unfortunately, NONE of them have signed up.  In truth, I still like the products.  I would ride out the busy waves in my life and keep working at building my WakeUpNow business if I was already at the rank of D3.  In six months, I was unable to sign up three people.  Since I'm not at D3 and money is tight, I can no longer pursue this business venture.  As of this moment I have disabled auto-renew, so my membership will end when it's time to renew (unless a miracle happens and I get three people to sign up in the next week or so).  I'm going to keep using WakeUpNow until my membership expires.

If you would like to hear more about my experiences with WakeUpNow, please message me or leave me a comment below.