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.

Where did this come from?

My printer was out of ink, so I decided to try Cartridge World in Midvale, UT.  They refill your printer ink, which saves you money vs buying a new ink cartridge.  I had never tried Cartridge World before, but I have bought ink from refilled cartridges before from other places.

Back in the old days, you had to send your cartridges out to have them refilled.  It could take a week or so.  For this reason, two sets of ink cartridges were a good idea: one set in your printer, and one set that you could send out to have it refilled.

My spare cartridges had been lying on a bookshelf in my living room for awhile- probably left out as a reminder that I would need to refill my ink soon.  Now I was OUT of ink.  I grabbed the cartridges- HP 15 black and HP 78 color, and headed to Cartridge World.  They had a color cartridge in stock, so they took my empty cartridge and sold me one that was already refilled.  They did not have a black in stock, so they refilled the cartridge while I waited.  It was nice!  It didn't take long.  I didn't have to leave it there and wait a week or two to retrieve the cartridges.  Quick, same-day service.  PLUS, it saved me about $30 by not having to buy it new.

I went home and tried to install the new ink cartridges.  When I opened the printer, I found that my printer DOES NOT take HP 15 & 78, it takes HP 564 (black, magenta, cyan, and yellow).



You can see the obvious differences in the cartridges.









WHAT IN THE WORLD?!
These cartridges look nothing alike.  How could I have confused the two?  I'll just have to chalk it up to a blonde moment.  But a couple of things just don't add up...

I have had those extra cartridges for awhile.  I assumed that they were my spare set.  I have never owned any other printer.  Where did these other cartridges come from?  And where was MY spare set for my printer?  I just paid to refill cartridges that I can't even use!

Luckily, they were nice about it at Cartridge World.  They took back the refilled cartridges, and exchanged them for the cartridges that I actually needed.  Crisis averted (whew).  AND the cartridges that I actually needed came to about $9 less than the other ones, so I saved EVEN MORE money!  Thank you Cartridge World!