Cleaning my house sometimes feels like an exercise in futility. Benjamin Franklin wrote that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. I would humbly like to add a third: that a dog will track muddy pawprints across a freshly mopped floor.
Growing up in a blue-collar family, I never considered paying someone to clean my home once I had a place of my own. My mother cleaned our house herself, and I learned to do the same at a young age.
From apartments to a starter home with my husband to our second home with kids, my husband and I handled all of the cleaning ourselves. And while I didn’t love the work of keeping a home clean, I did…
