When I found the Japanese puzzles and got myself involved with the Conceptis forums as well, people who had been there much longer than I was said: "Remember that you will never have a clean house again!" They were right, until now.
I know I have some serious issues about cleaning. I am the person who checks that all the items are placed straight; carpets on the floor, books on the shelves, magazines on the table... I even do that at work sometimes. When I start cleaning at home I always have to start with arranging all the misplaced items. After I have done that, I am usually so exhausted that I have no energy left to the next stage, washing floors or windows or removing the dust from small items. My husband takes care of the vacuum-cleaning. I find cleaning so useless; before I am finished, the place where I started from is totally messy again. Children leaving home made things a bit easier, but also leaving me with lots of stuff they wanted me to store for them. Their apartments are much smaller than mine.
I know I have some serious issues about cleaning. I am the person who checks that all the items are placed straight; carpets on the floor, books on the shelves, magazines on the table... I even do that at work sometimes. When I start cleaning at home I always have to start with arranging all the misplaced items. After I have done that, I am usually so exhausted that I have no energy left to the next stage, washing floors or windows or removing the dust from small items. My husband takes care of the vacuum-cleaning. I find cleaning so useless; before I am finished, the place where I started from is totally messy again. Children leaving home made things a bit easier, but also leaving me with lots of stuff they wanted me to store for them. Their apartments are much smaller than mine.
In the Finnish culture it is not very common that people have cleaners in the house. It is the burden placed usually to the woman of the house and conclusively women who use outside help feel guilty about it. However nowadays our taxation supports giving work to cleaners and we get deduction to the taxes if we employ cleaners or people doing household related work. The deduction is 60% of the work charge if the cleaner is a company listed as collecting the preliminary taxes from their employees. This model is very controversial; some people say that this is not fair but it gives advantage to rich people. I don't regard myself as rich but I am working and pay taxes for that. Why should I not get deduction if I again employ people paying taxes?
Anyway it took me this long to decide that I need my house cleaned. Before Christmas I got an advertisement to my mailbox from a company located in my own town. The ad was actually about giving a Christmas present to somebody but something in the ad caught my attention. That is very rare, mostly I throw all the junk mail away. You can get the idea from this screen shot from their website www.LA8.fi. The link is to the English pages so you can check more.
They have a really cool idea making things for people like me very easy. They clean the house, do all the paper work and I don't have to do anything else than keep away for the day, pay the bill and give their bill to the taxation authorities. The name is also ingenious. Lakaista is the Finnish equivalent to sweep. When we read the 8 in (informal) Finnish, the company name is lakasi. It is not correct Finnish but it is the Finnish we use in our daily speech and means swept.
I called them, made arrangements and last Tuesday they came, with this car :)
The text says: Attention: we are the LA8 Cleaning Police. Emergency: number, website
Well, no chance that the neighbours would not know what was going on...
Well, no chance that the neighbours would not know what was going on...
I spent the day in my daughter's apartment with Piitu and when I came back, I was more than glad to have taken this step. All the places were clean, much cleaner than I would get them, even after working for several hours!
No fingerprints in the kitchen (and there is chocolate candy on the table):
No fingerprints in the kitchen (and there is chocolate candy on the table):
No dust in the study:
All the tiny dolls and collectibles were wiped clean. BTW, the small wooden doll carrier on the floor in mine, from the 1950's :)
Now I am planning on a regular agreement for the cleaning. Why would I bother myself with cleaning anymore? I have enough work going through all the old school papers and books and all the stuff children left behind. Now I can concentrate on them and hope that someday I also will have empty space in some of my closets!
