a peek inside the fishbowl

Thanks for your entries! This giveaway is now closed. Looking for a promo code for Mopify? You can use mine: https://mopify.com/r/db9b013. :)

When I was small, my dad worked and my mother stayed home. As a business owner, he often worked long hours at his shop. I believe it’s an unspoken agreement, a General Rule that applied to most families then, and probably still does today: Someone brings home the bacon, and the other person holds down the fort. Of course, holding down the fort could mean a lot of things, but in my family it meant that my mother did the grocery shopping, all of the cooking, the laundry, and all of the cleaning. My dad has his job outside of the house, she had her job at home. Of course, there were exceptions. My father manned the grill, mowed the lawn, and fixed things.

Here at Casa Fishbowl, it’s Mark who is the primary wage earner. My work is all contract work, and it ranges from part- to full-time hours, depending on the week. So what does this do to the splitting of the household stuff? I do most of the grocery shopping and most of the cooking. As soon as the kids were old enough we divided up the chores. I have often flirted with the idea of hiring some help in this area. I think we do a tolerably good job keeping our house clean (it’s amazing what four people can accomplish in a couple of hours on a Sunday morning!) but things inevitably fall by the wayside. The floor behind the toilet doesn’t get the scrub down it needs on a regular basis, and there’s an embarrassing accumulation of toast crumbs between the stove and the counter that tends to get ignored. My problems (other than toast crumbs) was two-fold:

1) Guilt. If my mom did this, why can’t I? And if I’m hiring help, what kind of message am I sending my daughters? That we are above cleaning our own house? That our time is more valuable? GAH.

2) Who do I hire? I hardly knew where to start looking for someone. This was almost the hardest part of the whole thing.

A couple weeks ago I was contacted by Mopify and they asked me if I wanted to give their services a test run. I looked through their website and liked what I saw there so I let go of the guilt and decided that it was ok to delegate tasks that we need help with, and with that I scheduled a cleaning.

This is what I liked right off the bat:

• The Mopify website was very easy to use. Once you’re logged in and describe your home (3 bedroom, 3 bathroom etc.) you access an online ‘dashboard’ which shows your info all laid out: the date of your appointment, the name of the cleaner, etc. You can leave notes here too. For example, I asked the cleaner to use the side entrance and watch for the dog.
• My appointment was confirmed by text! It may seem like a small detail but I liked this modern twist on a traditional service. House cleaning in the age of the Internet!
• My own cleaning supplies were in play. I am particular, so I was happy about this. There’s an option for them to bring supplies (there’s a small surcharge).
• I didn’t need to make a huge commitment or sign a contract. I could request a weekly cleaning, monthly, or just a one off.
• I loved the easy online payment. No rushing to the bank machine to fork over cash!

And of course, I REALLY liked the fact that the house would be getting a much-needed, hard core, SPRING SCRUBDOWN by a pro.

The day arrived and the cleaner was five minutes early. Points for punctuality! Believe it or not I had just been picking things up and TIDYING in preparation of her visit. This sounds crazy, I know, but I needed her to focus on the important stuff, not my kids’ backpacks/socks/art projects. We chatted and I showed her around the house, showed her the stash of supplies and newly-washed rags, and then she got straight to work.

At one point I came upstairs to put something away and she was straightening the pile of books and magazines by my night stand. (Note: she found all of my missing hair elastics, dusted them off, and arranged them on my (tidy) pile of books.)

She spent four hours in the house. In fact, she mopped herself out the side door when it was time to go. And I have to say, I was very happy. Every was sparkly and fresh. Ah!

An unexpected benefit, now that it’s been a couple of days since the cleaning, I’m more motivated to keep everything clean. I must confess that the mudroom is not exactly neat as a pin today, but I found myself wiping down the sinks in the bathroom this morning.

Some of the highlights for me:

Daughter’s bedroom was very nicely tidied and vacuumed. The bed was made too. (!)

The family bathroom got some major attention, including the shower, a soap-spotted shower shelf and the electric toothbrush:

Of course, the kitchen got some love:

… and the family room did too.

Not shown in these photos – because it’s tough to photograph – are the scrubbed baseboards, overall lack of dust, and power vacuuming and floor mopping. :)

SO. Would you like to win a $100 gift certificate to put toward a cleaning? I have TWO to give away to two readers. Read on!

• In the comments below, tell me, what is your LEAST favourite household chore? You may choose more than one. :)
• One entry per email address please!
• If you can’t post your comment for whatever reason you can email it to me for posting at andrea at quietfish dot com. Please note, I cannot be responsible if your entry is misdirected or gets stuck in my Spam folder.
• This giveaway is void where prohibited by law. Please note that Mopify operates in the Ottawa area!
• I will draw two names using Random.org at noon EST on April 8, 2016. I’ll send the winners a gift certificate via email. The names of the winner will be posted here as well. So please check back!

Over to you. Good luck! And thank you Mopify for making my house sparkle again!

Edited to add: If you can’t wait an extra second and want to book a cleaning, use my promo code for Mopify! Click this link for $20 off your first cleaning with Mopify: https://mopify.com/r/db9b013

It was still dark. I had no idea what time it was but I was lying in bed, asleep, when I heard a distinctive click. I processed that bit of information, chewing it over in my mind. Was this something I needed to worry about? The click was the only sound breaking through the stillness of a sleeping household. There was no dog barking, no creaking stairs, no child crying. So what was it?

Click. 

I decided to get up to pee, and investigate along the way.

Click. 

As I made my way to the bathroom I noticed the time: 6 a.m. Then I noticed the light was on in our youngest daughter’s bedroom. Mystery solved. It was later than I thought and she was getting ready for school. I suddenly understood where the clicking was coming from. It’s the sound her markers make when she’s snapping the cap back on.

I realized right then and there that this amazing sense of hearing is a superpower that I did not have before having children. It wasn’t until I had put in some serious time being a mother that I learned to hear everything, and deduce everything from every sound. I could even hear trouble brewing in the silence that comes when the kids have been quiet in the other room a little too long.

That’s not my only super power. The other day I was standing in front of the fridge with an armful of odd-shaped packages and bottles when I suddenly dropped one. I didn’t even stop to think, I just reacted. In a flash, in a swoop, I caught the package (I believe it was sliced ham) before it even touched the ground. YESSS!

I think I got the most practice with the ol’ fall n’ catch routine when the kids were spitting out their soothers and dropping their lollipops and popsicles hither and yon. I know for a fact that I also caught the KIDS on numerous occasions, especially when they were learning to walk or run, jumping off playground equipment and hurtling down a slide or a toboggan run.

So SUPER HEARING and SUPER REFLEXES are the big ones. A lesser known power (but no less appreciated) is The Power To Make Dinner Out of Nothing. Or maybe that’s not a super power… just magic. ;)

Easy. The same places you hid them when they were little kids.