The Maids From Hell

When Sheri and I were first married we worked out what seemed to be an equitable distribution of household chores. I was in charge of all cooking and food preparation, while she was responsible basically for everything else.

I liked this arrangement partly because I am a fairly good cook and enjoy cooking, and partly because I detest housework. My wife's motivation for this division of labor developed more from her lack of affinity for cooking than her love for housework.

After several years discontent began to deteriorate this agreement. It started with Sheri occasionally cajoling me into helping her with the housework. Finally, one day she blurted out that she didn't think it was fair that she had to do all the housework while I only did the cooking.

Being a fair man, I knew that I had a sweetheart deal. However, I didn't particularly relish the prospect of doing housework on a regular basis. My reluctance wasn't because I deemed it to be women's work, it was because I considered it to be boring work.

Not being one to roll over easily, I countered that I got stuck doing all the maintenance and repair work around the house. Sheri initially tried to dismiss that defense by pointing out that she didn't have any experience or talent in such matters. Ever the gentleman, I offered to teach her. The negotiations concluded with me agreeing to help with the housework occasionally and to do most of the spring cleaning and other major projects.

My memory is somewhat hazy as to whether or not I actually ended up doing much spring cleaning or the like because we began moving fairly regularly for several years and were never in one place very long. It wasn't until we were settled into our condominium in Honolulu for about a year that it began to occur to my wife that she'd been had.

By the time she got around to the showdown, it came as no surprise. Shamelessly I had been trying to ignore the muttering and banging that increasingly accompanied her weekend cleaning regimen. Indeed, I was running scared because we were living in a relatively maintenance free environment. My best defense was gone.

I brazenly continued to resist the inevitable. First, I tried vainly to weasel out of it by pulling rank--I made more money. Then I pled for mercy on the grounds of job stress. This tact was also fruitless. Finally, stalling for time, I promised to mull the problem over and come up with a plan.

And then the miracle happened. My employer acquired a large maid service company which had an office nearby. It wasn't long before it occurred to me to call the new affiliate for an estimate. I speculated that after a reasonable employee discount monthly or biweekly service was within range. Either option would greatly reduce or eliminate the likelihood of my name being linked with the much dreaded H word. But the sales representative felt compelled to give away the farm and we became weekly customers.

Our notion of maid service was, at best, somewhat vague. We certainly did not anticipate teams of three or four descending upon our home in a forty-five minute frenzy of cleaning, mopping and vacuuming. Which, it seems, is de riguer in state-of-the-art maid service.

Very quickly we became accustomed to our new routine. For many months we were in a state of bliss, constantly marveling at the experience of returning to a home recently cleaned by people we had never even seen.

Soon after the service began we became aware of the need for maidproofing. It became necessary, for example, to unplug our electric coffeemaker to avoid coming home to an empty pot on a hot element, and to tape notes to the master bedroom wall switch to prevent having to reprogram our electronic clock radio every week.

We also learned early on to accept that some things would not be in their customary places after a visit from the maids. When this involved incorrect placement of items left on counters or furniture it was of no consequence. There were, however, a few incidents when the removal of a bottle of shampoo from the shower enclosure was not discovered until one or the other of us was halfway through our shower. We did not find this particularly amusing as these discoveries invariably occurred early in the morning before we were totally conscious.

Production-oriented maid service, we were to discover, is not without its drawbacks. The first casualty was a salt shaker that was suddenly absent following the weekly cleaning. This was followed a short time later by a glass table top which developed a large chip in its side due to a collision with a fast-moving vacuum cleaner. By the time a personalized brass razor disappeared from our shower, although the maid service had replaced the broken items and recovered the razor from the trash, the downside of maid service was getting hard to ignore.

Despite the steadily increasing number of scuffs to our baseboards and furniture from aggressive vacuuming and mopping, we doggedly stayed with the service. We were addicted to our new freedom from the drudgery of housework.

Eventually, alas, we moved out of the service area of the maid service and are now somehow adjusting to doing our own housework for awhile. Sheri and I wax misty every time we think of the Maids From Hell and long for the day when we can justify the expense of hiring their counterparts at our new home. When you're hooked, you're hooked.