I, along with many other chronically messy people, dream of having a maid. 

Someone to do all that pesky cleaning that I never seem to get around to doing.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must share . . . that I once had a maid.  For the two years I lived in Thailand, I had a maid.  The first year, when I lived alone, she came once a week.  The second year, when I had roommates . . . that maid came twice a week. 

Mmm-hmmm.  And it was awesome. 

And another confession that I should go ahead and make here and now is that if I ever make it as a writer, and have a real income from it . . . I’m gettin’ a maid.  Even if I’m still writing about my own deslobification process.  And I won’t feel one bit conflicted.

Because having a maid . . . doesn’t solve my slob-problem. 

As evidenced by this:

That’s a picture from my Disney hotel room last week. 

Clutter . . . is not a maid’s problem.  That’s a full-time live-in professional organizer’s job.  And I have no desire to have a professional organizer live in my house. 

I’m pretty sure she would get on my nerves. 

I’ll admit that last week it was nice to have the beds made (since we didn’t make them ourselves) and the towels hung up (since we didn’t hang them ourselves) and the new toilet paper roll actually put on the bar instead of balancing on top of the old roll. 

But the room still looked like a slob lived there.  Someone who isn’t me can’t make the judgement call about whether we still need the character greeting schedule that fell off the bed. 

She can’t determine if we meant to come back to those half-drunk water bottles. 

I’ve known, since having one of my own, that maids do not solve slob-problems.  But sometimes the “if only” dream creeps back.  This week was a good reality check. 

The reality is that having a maid helps.  A lot.  It helps to have someone else take care of the weekly cleaning tasks and do the big jobs that are all-too-easy to put off. 

 But it’s the day to day stuff.   The towel-hanging and the water-bottle-trashing. 

Those are the things that determine the life of a slob.