As many of my regular readers now, my year has been really stressful since I became the Campus Technologist.  There is one thing I did last spring, that has really made a huge difference.  Getting a maid service.

My fellow teachers had been onto me to do this for a long time.  A few months before, my next door neighbor at school had "The Maids" come and do her house and then hired another teacher's maid to come on a regular basis to keep it up.  Years ago, when I worked at TI, I had a maid but she eventually drove me nuts.  I tried a second one, who was worse than having my other around so I'd given up on it.

This time I hired "The Maids", and it took them almost a full day to get the house caught up.  It had not had a deep clean since we moved in about 8 years.  I had to do a lot of prep work but not as much as I should have.

I have them come every other week and I am considering changing it to weekly.  Right now, I spend one week enjoying having a clean house and the second week getting ready for them to come back.  That means making sure I have clean sheets, and that I pick up the areas that tend to clutter -- bathroom counter, kitchen counter and the dining room table. 

What does that mean for teaching though?  Easy, today is Sunday and reather than worrying about having a clean house, or having a dirty house and it wearing on my mind, I can concentrate on getting ready for the next week.  I'm putting together review packets, making sure I have every thing ready on the class website, etc.  I also will be doing some grading and updating the gradebook. 

I really recommend a service like the "The Maids" rather than hiring someone personally, because if they do drive you nuts, they will send you a different team.  In fact, I don't think the same people clean each time anyway, which keeps them from acting like your mother.