Long ago, I was housesitting for friends while they were taking a much-needed vacation, and cleaning the house so they'd come home to a fresh space. Without much thought, I improvised a temporary clothesline outside and washed and line dried the blankets, pillows, mattress covers, the whole thing. It was Spring, and it seemed the easy and obvious thing to do, one of those yearly tasks nobody enjoys doing but everyone enjoys afterward.
After they'd come back, I think it was perhaps a month later, I happened to be by, and the woman from the couple remarked to me sadly that while she appreciated my hard work, she wished I hadn't touched their bed. She liked the comfortable smell of their blankets after a long winter and was sad to come home and have it gone. I apologized automatically, but my mind reeled. Why would anyone want ... but wait. Why do we do anything in our homes, O Melancholy Hammer? Because they aren't hotel rooms. They're homes. Absolutely nothing about this situation has to make sense to me - it only needs to make sense to them. To say the word home is the evocation of the personal, the place where nobody who lives there needs to rationalize anything at all. It's a holy place.
I have a partner who enjoys drying dishes. I've always thought it was unnecessary, barring visible spots on glasses (or when I'm working in a fine home with silverware and dishes that require such care) when there's a dishrack, and I have other things to attend to. But there is no way in the world I'd want to give up the experience of washing while he dries; that gentle swing and sway of our bodies next to each other as we go about this simple task. I try to schedule dishwashing when he's around just so we can work together, and that in itself is inconvenient to me but absolutely worth it. He's also an expert folder, and though I could do it faster myself, I also schedule laundry so we can work together. I do this not because it's efficient - I do it because the routine is part of what makes this place a home. Efficiency is nice, but if it supplants acts of love, it's not a win.
One of the real pleasures of working for yourself is knowing you have a different time bank than other people; tasks must still be done, but the order of operations is mine to choose. I don't believe I'd be successful as a "regular" housecleaner, sprinting from one bleach and pine solvent smelling apartment to the next and not really looking at any house as a home. There's no time for that when you're working hourly. As far as ways to make a living go, that seems like an exhausting and unfulfilling job. When I come home, I am tired, very tired indeed; but I am as happy and satisfied as I could ever be after work, and ready for an evening of reading and working on my novel. As an investment in the quality of life for other people, I think a lot about my responsibility to help and to plan the details into the day that matter even when they aren't immediately noticeable. I try to make time to clip the dead leaves from the houseplants and give them a half-turn for sunlight symmetry, or wash, starch and iron some curtains that have seen better days. To make a house feel like home.
At my housekeeper jobs (these are separate from the one-time cleanout or organization work I often do) I have time to plan. When I first get there, I can coat the oven with baking soda and slip the burners into Ziplocs with some ammonia, run around the house and pick up the laundry, noting what needs to be done in each room, start a load, spritz down the showers and bathtubs to give them time to dissolve the hard water stains, and then start on picking up and putting away objects in each room, dusting as I go, making a note of anything which needs extra polishing or cat hair removal. I like working alone, sketching out in my notebooks what can be done today and what can be pushed to the next week, questions about seasonal items, make and bring the goop to clean computer keyboards next time, pick up a new washer for the bathroom sink, all of that. I don't feel like I'd have time to do what I do best, as a regular housecleaner. I wouldn't have time to make the comfort level many tired people aspire to have. I don't always make the right choices, and wash the blankets, for example. But I do try.
It's a luxury, to be able to choose who to work with. Most of us can't do that. If I wanted to pick better money, I could hire a team and do the whirlwind cleaning jobs some people like - because some people really do like hotel rooms; but I choose different work instead. Comprehensive work with kinder people, creating lasting comforts. I want to think about the people I work for and smile. And I do.
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