First date…with the housekeeper

After a long search, we have found THE ONE. We finally have a housekeeper! Her name is Lupe and she is amazeballs.

About three months ago, V and I finally accepted that we were terrible at maintaining even a modicum of tidiness at our apartment. We’re both just too busy and lazy. Since we’re still trying to live frugally, it took us a while to find someone we could afford. But we finally found one and she came this past week for the first time.

First, I had to “clean” the place a bit so she could clean. We had unfolded/unhung laundry in the living room, unwashed clothes spewing out of suitcases on the floor, scraps of wrapping paper, ribbon and other crafting materials strewn about the house. I pretty much threw everything in the bedroom to clear up the spaces I wanted her to work on.

She doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Spanish so I pretty much just pointed out the problem areas, took out my cleaning materials and let her do her thing. I would sneak a peek once in a while and I realized something – her way of cleaning is so much more superior to mine. She was doing things that we would never ever do on a regular basis. I’m going to share the list of things with you even though you might judge us for it. These may be things that everyone else but us does. But it’s okay, we excel in other areas of life. In fact, watching our housekeeper has shown me that it’s worth it to spend money on an expert who will do the job excellently than attempt to do it myself poorly.

Lupe’s amazing list of cleaning feats:

• take food out of the pantry/cabinet and wipe down each shelf. Confession – I saw spilled panko in those shelves a few weeks ago and did not clean it. I’m so gross, I know.
• wash the dish drainer
• wipe down the tops of the cabinet
• wipe down cabinet doors
• clean behind the toaster oven. clean the crumb catcher.
• remove discoloration in the bathtub with ammonia. I don’t even know what form ammonia cleaner comes in. What is ammonia and why is it better than bleach?

But just so you don’t think we’re cave people, I should tell you about some of the cleaning-related things we do on a regular basis:

• do laundry
• disinfect the toilet
• spray down the shower after each use
• disinfect kitchen surfaces

Hmm, that list seems pretty short…maybe we are cave people.

Bathroom design

I added a small decorating touch to our bathroom today. Our lease is up in 6 months and I’m not sure if we’ll renew so I didn’t want to paint (but I reeeally want to paint our next place).

I first learned about wall decals from That Wife. But as it turns out, I think I may have been the last person to not know about decals. My sister told me she had been planning all along to use decals at her house, V knew about the sports decals from Fathead and there are literally thousands of sites that offer decals.

Since I’m not at all experienced in home decor, I wanted to start out small. Our walls are slightly textured and I wasn’t sure if decals would adhere nicely to our walls. So after browsing through hundreds of designs on Etsy, I finally found one that was small, attractive and didn’t require any composition skills on my part (because I lack those). It was difficult to choose though, there are so many great designs available.

But I decided on a water lotus design. I thought it would be funny to evoke pond imagery in the bathroom where people are doing things that they could be doing in a pond. Since I picked a conservative design, I went bold on the color with aqua. I was really nervous about my choice but I’m happy with it.

The designer also sent along some butterfly decals, so I put them above the trash can. Get it? Our trash can smells like flowers so butterflies like to be near it.

I like the design and the color, but I think ultimately, the white walls are just too stark. And/or maybe I need to add other things to make it look more pulled together because right now, it kind of looks like the pop of color comes out of nowhere. But we’ll probably only be here for just another 6 months so I’m going to leave it as it is. It looks good enough.

Mini makeover: bathroom

Our bathroom doesn’t have any built-in cabinets (just a medicine cabinet) so when we first moved in, we used one of V’s plastic shelves to hold all our bathroom stuff.

It wasn’t pretty by any means, but it was what we had on hand and we didn’t want to start buying furniture until we really knew what we needed. We had double the bathroom supplies and we wanted to whittle it down to just one set of supplies.

So six months after we moved in, we finally got rid of the plastic shelves and bought some real cabinets.