Economic fiasco forces housewife to nix house cleaning from budget

by Sharon Hebert

Due to a price increase at Merry Maids, I have been forced to postpone my top-to-bottom spring cleaning routine this year from March 21^st to April 21st. I simply do not have the cash to get my house clean.

As it happened, while I was watching the fall reruns of American Idol, a stampede of bears from Wall Street hopped my garden fence and trampled my harvest, so I am left with no organics to feed my children and the sticker prices at Whole Foods are draining our Disney Vacation slush fund.

I phoned Merry Maids, but due to a recent raid by INS, they have been forced to hire locals and offer health benefits because, according to the Department of Labor and Statistics, people below the 150 percentile poverty level get just as sick and just as often as us middle class folk. Therefore, the adjusted hourly rate is too steep for my household budget this year.

I’m determined to tackle the job on my own, but the February issue of Martha Stuart Living magazine has issued a warning on the hazards of inhaling oven cleaner fumes. To add insult to injury, the handle on my new synthetic swiffer mop contains lead paint. I tried to save money by purchasing it at The Dollar Store, but as my Mom always says, “A penny wise, a pound foolish.”

Those Green Products are simply out of the question. I’m all for saving the environment - don’t get me wrong, I do still manage to send a little something to Save The Polar Bear Fund each year - but they simply do not cut through grease like the old toxic-shock mixes at Home Depot. My neighbor, Naomi, swears by them, but they are so very expensive (which would explain the orange sticky-note from Wells Fargo tacked to her front door).

So I am forced to live with this mess and push my annual cleaning date off into the future. Nobody knows how long this will last, but I am told these things do come in cycles, and as the nature of cycles go, this mess will get turned around as soon as the government’s economic stimulus kicks in.

Perhaps I should just let go of my anxieties and resume my Tuesday morning coffee dates with the neighborhood housewives. The country cottage look is coming back in style anyway and opulence is SO last year!

Anyone would agree, I am sure, that April is a more suitable month for cleaning since it always snows in March now and it’s not really a month for opening up the windows to aerate the abode. If I could just get the ear of my congressman, I would petition to switch the official first day of spring to April 21^st and this whole spring cleaning fiasco would no longer be an issue.

If my guests comment on those dust balls gathering under my Pottery Barn baker’s rack like mini tumbleweeds in the wild, wild West, I’ll blame it on those damn bears. Times are certainly tough, but I am a survivalist at heart.