Let me start off by saying I am not a very good housekeeper. I have a hard time keeping up with the laundry, I barely can keep up with the dishes, and the rest kind of gets cleaned on an as needed basis. I have always thought how nice it might be to get some "help" but always been kind of against hiring a maid. Like it was against my principles or something. I SHOULD be able to do all this myself, but I never quite could. A few years ago Dan and I were supposed to move to Africa. The houses at the compound in Africa came with a maid. I remember sitting in my living room folding laundry and thinking, "I can't wait until we get to Africa and I can just have the maid do all this for me." I remember it giving me hope, like there was a light at the seemingly never ending tunnel of laundry. Needless to say we ended up not moving to Africa, and I remember that was one of the things that made me disappointed about not going.
Fast forward to the present... Before we moved to Doha I struggled with the idea of getting a maid. For some reason my mind could handle it thinking of Africa when the maid was just provided and the decision was out of my hands. Once the decision was in my hands I had a hard time. Before we got here I was pretty sure I wouldn't get one. When we walked into our house here I was somewhat overwhelmed. This house is almost twice as big as our house in Texas and it is just SO dirty here. The night we moved in, it only took a few minutes for all our feet to get completely black on the bottom- the floors were so dirty. I felt completely overwhelmed just with the move alone, and to come in to such a dirty house put me over the top. I got a recommendation from a neighbor and hired a maid within a few days. I posted my feelings about the first time she came to clean our house here (I'll paste the section I'm referring to in case you don't want to read that whole post:)
I finally caved in and from a recommendation from another woman in the compound, got an Indian woman named Geena to come to my house to clean for me. Can I admit something? It was really, really weird for me, and actually kind of sad. This lovely 60 something woman came in and cleaned my whole house. The house the company gave us is 4800 square feet (actually the main reason I conceded to get a maid... I raised up the white flag in defeat, it's too much for me) and she spent four solid hours cleaning and working so very hard. It kind of broke my heart. She had cleaned another house that morning and had to leave my house because she had to go cook dinner for someone else. I was tired just watching her. Meanwhile, she's fawning over my babies because they make her miss her grandbabies back in India. It stirred up all sorts of emotions in me, most of them I didn't like. I felt guilty, lazy, undeserving. It was such a strange day for me. While it was really nice to have so much of my house clean at the same time, I don't really think I'm looking forward to having her come back. It just made me so sad.
Well, those feelings never went away. I absolutely could not handle having someone else clean my house. I hated just having someone in my space, I hated feeling like I "needed help." I didn't like someone else touching my laundry, or doing my dishes. I started to dread the days she was going to come. Now don't get me wrong, she is a dear woman. So loving, so kind to the children, a faithful, religious woman, and we all like her. I just realized I am not cut out to have a maid. I am learning that i am just too fiercely independent. So I struggled and struggled with what to do, because I didn't want her to feel like we didn't like her or that she didn't do a good job. (and, honestly, I was maybe a little scared to have to clean the house on my own.) But it became more and more apparent that it was costing me more emotionally to have a maid than it would cost me to deal with the fear of letting her go. This all sounds so silly when I type it out (like the "first world problems"). Maybe it is.
I decided that I would feel better about the whole thing if I could find her a replacement job before I told her I was going to let her go. Literally the afternoon I made that decision, a person I had just met that recently moved into the compound asked if I knew of anyone who was available to clean houses. WHY YES! SO I told her about Geena and she wanted to use her. That took a load off my mind, and I had to gear up to tell Geena we weren't going to have a maid anymore. I literally had nightmares about it. I don't know why it became such a big deal in my mind, but it did, and the feelings were very real. So today was the big day, and I woke up with my whole body tingling with anxiety. When I heard her coming in our kitchen door I was so nervous I was shaking. I just told her we decided not to have a maid, and told her about the other lady who wanted a maid. She was very nice about it and very understanding and we parted with some kind words and a hug. We will still use her for babysitting and probably to check on our house when we go out of town, but we no longer officially have any "help." AND I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER.
I know I won't be able to keep the house as clean as she did, and I'm ok with that. But I will have that little piece of my soul back that died the day I hired a maid.
Wish me luck.
