Having an Extra Pair of Hands

Recently, I have got a helper a home.

This helper is commonly known as a "maid" locally, but I personally find this name a little degrading and less respectful, so I prefer to call her a helper.

Anyway, she is housed at my place for a period of 10 days 9 nights because my friends, who are her employers, have gone overseas for a holiday and hence needed to "tompang" her somewhere.

Her name is Eh Ka Paw Mu from Myanmmar, 24 years old. A young and sweet lady. Quite pretty in fact. She cooks well and is quite efficient in doing the housework. Since I have help, I have asked her to do all the things that I have been wanting to do but did not have time or energy to do. I made her clean the windows (gosh, those dreaded windows which are so dirty and difficult to clean and I had long given up cleaning them since god-knows-when), take down all the curtains and wash them and hang them back (I have a washing machine and dryer ok, so please don't think that I torture her), wash the toys (I used to wash them BEFORE Eston was born) and pack and clean the storeroom. I did this with her, coz I needed to decide which things to throw and keep. Eventually I threw half the stuff in the storeroom, afterwhich I was very, very pleased.

She did all these on top of the daily mopping, cooking, washing of dishes, and occasional laundry and toilet washing. She also re-packed my kitchen (the cupboards and drawers were in a mess eversince my mum came - she's good at stuffing things everywhere but not in a systematic way) and cleaned up whatever she could clean.

I realised that I feel happier during this period, because my house is CLEAN.

This is my NORMAL standard. In the PAST.

And I have just realised how much I have lowered my cleanliness standard eversince I have had kids.

Snapshots of myself on all fours scrubbing the toilet floor with a 8-month pregnated belly at 11pm suddenly whizz through my mind. That was before Estelle was born.

After she was born, I still try my best to upkeep the cleanliness (I wash her toys periodically, okay!) but have let go of some things like windows.

After Eston was born, I struggled very badly. It came to a point when I was going mad. I couldn't cope.

We got a part-timer who comes on Saturdays for 4 hours to do big items like washing the 2 toilets, vacuuming, mopping and ironing. We pay her $10 per hour. She is not very thorough but I just keep her because she desperately needs the money. I just close one eye and live with it.

I like the idea that all the housework can be taken off my shoulders, but will not contemplate getting a full-time helper at the moment. Prefer to have our own privacy and save on this cost. I will make do with a part-timer, but I do hope that the part-timer can be as good as Mu. Perhaps I might ask my friends if we could arrange for Mu to be our part-timer. Let her earn the extra cash. Why not, right?

Tomorrow I will be sending her back to my friends. It had been a good arrangement.

:-)