To maid or not to maid...

I was lucky enough to have off yesterday in celebration of Veteran's Day.  In my pre-baby life I might have slept in, had some coffee and breakfast while reading a magazine or watching TV and laid around all day basking in the glory that is laziness.  If you were able to do that yesterday, good for you!  I am jealous.

What did I do?  Well, daycare was open so Knox still went to school.  I had to fight some intense mommy guilt on that one, and honestly I almost started crying when Max drove away to take him to school in the morning.  I kept thinking about how little time I have to spend with him and how cute he is, how I surely could accomplish everything I needed/wanted to even with him home.  But, reason got the best of me and off to school he went.  (Because let's be serious, I would have gotten 1/10 of the stuff done with that rug rat following me around the house intentionally dropping everything in site on the floor for the opportunity to say "uh-oh.")

For the 3-4 hours after they left I cleaned.  Yes, you heard me right.  I spent at least half of my day off cleaning.  HOW LAME.  I did (and put away) the laundry, swept and steamed the floors, cleaned the microwave, dusted, cleaned the toilets, put stuff away and vacuumed.  Well, the robot vacuumed but I had to turn it on and empty the canister a few times.  I did not sit down that entire time...just cleaned.  I had to stop cleaning to take a shower so that Max and I could go to an afternoon movie and actually enjoy my time off.

Throughout my cleaning time I had many thoughts:
1.  This is so lame.
2.  I need a maid.
3.  Who do I think I am?  I can't have a maid!
4.  I can't believe it takes this much time to keep this small of a house clean.  Who has 4 hours a week to CLEAN?!
5.  This is so lame, I seriously need a maid.
6.  You can't get a maid, keep cleaning.

As a working mom, I would like to go on record saying that spending ANY amount of my very limited free time CLEANING is quite possibly one of the biggest wastes of time I've ever encountered.  I have lowered my standards of what "clean" means to me over the course of this past year but at a certain point you just have to clean the toilet!

How do other working parents keep their houses clean?  Do they have maids or do they also have this same conversation in their heads on a regular basis?  Should I get a maid and enjoy my free time???

xoxo,

Ashley