Needlepoint Fabric

Your best solution there is to get rid of the male

Bratty dear - could you, would you, put a pic up on rctnp of Stan ? I would really love to see him !

I'm not sure I could get one but picture a 45-year-old Polak with blondish thining hair and a beard in a teeshirt holding a vacuum cleaner and you've got it. LOL!

Here I thought that you had found Adonis with Vacuum Cleaner lol

Nope, just a thickening, balding, middle aged guy who has figured out he can get steadier work cleaning than painting.

Elizabeth

There's merit to that. I had to paint a window frame this week - I had blinds installed and now when the blind is up, the frame is on display. I couldn't with a good conscience call a painter in for that, so reluctantly I did it myself. I hate painting, I swore I would never do it anymore but there it was.

I think doing housework (for cash) can look attractive as opposed to painting.

I love your description because except for his height (am I right in thinking you said he was way over 6'?) I was married to a blondish, thinning hair, slightly pudgy, Polak who had no problem mopping floors for me.

Lucille

My DH is way over 6', but Stan is prolly about 5'11 and more than slightly pudgy.

Elizabeth

That could be my Mel. I guess he was around 5'10 or 11 and was always on a diet.

Sigh that is the problem today - nothing is as it seems. How fast we have moved from Adonis mopping Brats floors to about 5'11" and more than slightly pudgy !

I would have had a lot in common with Mel, except somehow now I am finding the will to diet lacking lol

That's because reality has set in.

Oh be quiet you ! It's arctic weather here today and I resent you sitting in the sun fanning yourself lol

I don't care if they do it my way, I just want the chores done that I tell them to do. Done, not half-assed or ignored completely.

I really seriously doubt that the bimbo who strewed laundry all over my dining room would do the same in her own house.

They work real well when I'm standing over them. But at some point, I need to go lie down, and it seems that as soon as I leave the room, that's their cue to stop working.

The problem is, it's a big city, and if I'm not happy with their work, they know that I cannot contact all two million people in a 50-mile radius and tell them all "don't hire Sally Smith". They'll find someone else willing to pay them.

My worst experiences were with college girls who advertise as independent cleaners (the agency girls come with too many restrictions

-- most of what I need done, the insurance will not allow them to do). They get into cleaning because $15 or $20 an hour, starting at 10 AM, is better than minimum wage for an office job starting at 8 AM, but then they get uppity that because they're in college, scutwork is beneath them. They don't want to do anything that might raise a sweat or get their hands dirty. Checking references is essentially pointless -- I'm convinced that they have me talking to their best friend, because no actual client would give such a glowing reference for the quality of work I got for my money.

They've never heard of "taking pride in your work"; it's all about how little can I do and how fast can I get out of here. And the fact that I am actually here while they're here, not at an office downtown, means that they can't just spray a little PineSol around to make the place smell clean and spend the next 3.75 hours sitting on the couch watching TV, or come in just long enough to rearrange a few things and then leave and get paid for spending the afternoon in the park. If they're not here for the full 4 hours that I'm paying for, I will know.

Corollary: don't do what the customer hasn't told you to do. They don't want to do what I ask for, so they find something else to do to sound busy.

One didn't recognize some of my ethnic foodstuffs, and took it upon herself to decree that these unopened jars in the cupboard looked "spoiled" and tossed them in the trash. Her family wouldn't eat anything that looked like that, therefore I shouldn't eat it either.

One rearranged my kitchen cupboards after specifically being told not to; any of my unusual stuff that she didn't recognize went in the very back, regardless that some of it is stuff that I use frequently.

Another was quite pleased with herself that she'd had the brains to organize my living room -- it made no sense to her that I'd have thread and papers and fabric all in one bag, looking like a jumbled mess, so she put all the threads in one bag, and all the papers in another, and all the fabric in a third, wasn't she clever?

Meanwhile, what I specifically asked them to do didn't get done.

My adopted sister, on the other side of the country, works as a cleaning lady, and is just horrified at some of the stories I tell her. Then again, she's German-trained and perfectionist; at age 59, she'll still climb on the kitchen counters to get the last bit of cobweb out of the corner of the ceiling. The notion that one cleaning lady let the whole house get covered in cobwebs and didn't do a thing about it made her swoon.

Unfortunately, no one around here seems to know of a good German cleaning lady.

Don't be so quick to resent me. It's been generally crummy weather today, dank, dark, damp and windy.

Oh-I forgot to mention that it dribbled a little this morning too.

The heart of the problem is that, with all my physical problems, I can accomplish more in 15 minutes than most of the people I've hired can accomplish in 4 hours.

When I was well, I could clean this house thoroughly in 45 minutes on a Saturday morning, so don't try to tell me that it takes you 4 hours to not even complete one room.

The first one I hired was given specific instructions (and I had paid extra for) to clean the oven, because I react to the fumes of oven cleaner. She disappeared into the kitchen, which -- other than the oven

-- was basically spotless. After she left, I waited a few hours for the fumes to dissipate so I could go into the kitchen without getting sick, and discovered that the one thing that she had not done was clean the oven.

God only knows what she did for the four hours she was clanking around in there.

The agency refused to send anyone to fix the problem, claiming that she'd cleaned the oven and before calling them I'd had enough time to use it and re-dirty it, so I just wanted something for nothing, a second oven cleaning. !!!!!

Swore up and down that she was one of their best cleaners and if she said she cleaned the oven, then she cleaned the oven. If she was their best, I don't want to see their worst.

Hey, Sheena! Buy me a ticket to NS and I'll paint for you. I like to paint!!! And stain and varnish (especially if it's the new water- soluble varnish).

Joan

I should have added the bleach she wanted to use. And the scrub brush.

Your wonderful old floors can survive nearly anything, modern laminates don't.