Maidless

I recently post this on FB.

I didn't know what made it clicks, but I guess it relates to lots of my friends too.

And admitting I am married to a clean freak is somewhat liberating. It was never easy. I have come up with various defense mechanism to face the strains. Some were so high drama escape, I doubt I will ever do it ever again in my life time hehe...I guess I am aging. But wasn't I all the while :-D 

Here's the post:

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I just saw Ustaz Dr. Zaharuddin Abd Rahman's posting about his maid running away on FB and I was rather 'wowed!' He even posted her passport picture, advising people against hiring her. He must have been really annoyed (not the best choice of word in this case, tp sbb Ustaz punya pasai, let's be subtle :-P). Definitely ini ujian untuk beliau. Which part is the Ujian - is not on me to point.

Anyway, I have never experienced a maid in my own household. I, myself was cared by a couple of local maids, though. Do I like it? No. Ask me again? Still, it's going to be a NO. So I don't wish my children to be cared by one too. That was my personal experience, some others may view it differently. And my husband also supported me. And Alhamdulillah, we're still managing without one.

But it was never easy to do everything on our own. Countless hours were spent 'bertekak' on household chores and how it was supposed to be done. My husband is a clean freak, but he's immuned to 'mess', while I am not a freakishly clean person, but I can't stand messiness. Imagine the frustration and chaos.

As time goes by, we learn to adapt and we're still learning. He tried to tone down his 'cleaning system' and most times did everything by himself (hooray!). He's the 'master' of the laundry and 'non-sticky' cleaned-floor . While I learn to simply close both my eyes to all the mess in the house, and open one of them when I think it has got out of hand. Some days, if I can't stand it, I chose my best ammo - the silent treatment. (It works like a charm, by the way haha).

My house no longer looks like I bought the whole of IKEA, but my husband couldn't care less. So I thought why stress myself out. As long as the children are happy, well-fed, disciplined and counselled over performing their prayers, their school work and get them helping with some house chores, and we managed to get them out of the house to their designated places everyday, and both of us to work and then safely got them back home - then we are extremely grateful, Alhamdulillah. We have a clean bed, bath, cloth, utensils and surrounded with lots of books. Just what we needed, so we're fine In Sha Allah.

On a side, but related note:

Sometimes, some friends would mentioned those daily maids that come to help you with chores to be paid by the hour.

One day I told my husband - "Hey, they paid RM8 an hour for those maids that come to clean your house, you know. Maybe you should pay me that instead (every time I do housework)."

And he asked: "How about me, then?"

I simply said: "Nope, you don't need to get paid, because you're supposed to do all of this!"