To Maid or Not to Maid

I have a history of liking small homes, whether house or apartment, bought or rented. This is strongly tied to the fact that I have atypical CF.

I was a homemaker for a lot of years and simply didn't have the energy to keep a big house adequately clean for my health needs. To make matters worse, cleaning mostly benefited my husband and children, not me.

For me, it was a health threat to clean up after other people. 

I have a relative who sometimes had a maid come in and clean. At least once, I was there when the maid showed up and I was not impressed with their hygiene standards.

My mother was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years and she kept her house spotless while cooking from scratch three meals a day most days. When I was twelve, she began working as a cleaning lady at an apartment complex and later worked as a maid for wealthy families. 

Most maids don't do what my mother did. 

My mother always wore white pants and tops to work and she told me once that she did so because they continued to look good for a long time and black did not. 

The reason: She washed her work clothes in hot water and bleach EVERY single time.

This is probably not what most maids, janitors etc do.

Over the years, I've wondered a lot about how I might live if I ever had a lot more money and I don't have an answer to that because I know I would need some kind of help to keep a large home clean but I do not like the idea of hiring a maid.

If I hire someone to come in once a week, they will also work for other people. Given my medical situation, I feel like that's just exposing me to the germs of a lot of other households.

I think I would need to be so rich that I could have a live-in maid to have any hope of it making health sense for me.

After we were diagnosed, I eventually filed for divorce and I and my sons began getting rid of stuff. Our lifestyle would fit right in with "extreme minimalism" enthusiasts.

This is done for purposes of germ control. I simply CANNOT be healthy while embracing North American Affluenza.

I also have political ideals about current trends in so-called women's rights that fit nicely with me being hesitant to hire a maid. Currently, we promote the idea that "women deserve to have real careers, like men" and the reality is this doesn't really enhance the lives of women generally. 

Instead of promoting, the welfare of all women, it means some women get serious careers and other people -- mostly lower class women -- still do the women's work of raising the kids, cooking the meals and cleaning the home. 

Those women have little to no hope of ever being on the other side of that equation. It's generally a permanent divide between upper class career women and the mostly female servants that make it possible for the privileged few to have a serious career "like a man."

But I am hesitant to claim any particular virtue in that regard. My health prevented me from having "a real career" -- and thus prevented me from making good money in my own name -- and my health is also why I would be reluctant to hire a maid even if I could afford one. 

(Reality: I can't afford it either).

Enlightened self interest and placing germ control above all else is my reason, not some high falutin ideals about helping ALL women live better. It's nice that those social observations play well with my health goals, but I'm not going to claim I would adhere to these processes for purely ideological reasons if my health didn't constitute a gun to my head making me feel compelled. 

I might be more willing to consider hiring a maid if I knew they would be as hygienic as my mother. But most simply will not be.

In her teens, my mother wanted to be a doctor. Her interest in health persisted, so she read up on health topics constantly. 

This fact informed her cleaning practices and standards of cleanliness. This level of knowledge about germ control will simply never be the norm for people who get paid to clean for a living.

(If you do this kind of work: I recommend you do like my mother and at least wash your clothes in hot water with bleach or peroxide every time if at all possible -- for YOUR sake.)