Taking Back the House

First day of school for my kids today, first day of no domestic help for me.

I reluctantly hired a nanny about two years ago when my husband started pleading with me to get extra help. At the time I was working part-time, driving my kids to and from school and all of their extra-curricular activities, doing two loads of laundry a day every day, constantly ironing (that damn pile never shrunk), cooking all meals, keeping up with my volunteer activities at my kids' school and with a non-profit organisation that I've been involved with for years, and trying to help out my husband with all of his stuff. I also refused to let go of my social life since that is what helped keep me balanced, so somehow managed to squeeze in time with friends, book club, etc. At the end of the day, I was pretty much exhausted and bitchy. Hence the reason why my husband suggested we get some help.

For awhile, it was good having an extra pair of hands around. It meant that I could spend more time with my kids, rather than having to constantly ask them to wait while I folded laundry, or made dinner. It also meant that I didn't have to constantly rudely rouse the baby from his nap in order to go and pick up his siblings from school. Most importantly, it meant that I could sometimes have time to myself to grocery shop or just go for a walk if I wanted to.

Unfortunately, the nanny, although a very nice person, quickly got on our nerves to some extent. It wasn't deliberate, but it's something of a cultural thing. She's from the Philippines and has this whole passive-aggressive thing going on that I've seen in so many of her countrymen (I hate to stereotype ...), and this weird mistrust of anyone, despite the fact that we bent over backwards to do everything and anything for her. It started to drive me nuts that I had to give specific instructions each and every time; she wasn't able to generalise and extrapolate when necessary. After awhile, we also realised that she was singlehandedly responsible for making us even more disorganised than we'd been before she began working for us.

When I used to work for others, I always tried my hardest to never slack off. I also tried to take initiative whenever possible, and didn't assume that because I did so entitled me to special privileges. It bothers me to see people who start taking advantage of their employers' goodness. I'm not one to nickel and dime and make anyone punch in and out, so I always paid generously and erred on the nanny's side. Suddenly, she started taking liberties and would leave hours early without asking or telling me, when she thought I wouldn't be around to notice. She started using our telephone to call her family long distance without asking permission, or advising us. The thing that most bothered me about the telephone calls wasn't the money, but more the fact that I noticed that she made these phone calls when I wasn't around, and she was supposed to be looking after my kids. There were countless other things that irritated me, all of them probably fairly small things, but when taken together really did add up.

It got to the point where we started really looking forward to her last day. When she left last Friday which was officially her final day under our employ, my husband was ecstatic; when I cooked dinner that night and he was able to enjoy it (she had this annoying habit of cleaning up almost as soon as the dinner was made, which meant that he often didn't have any food waiting for him when he got home), he turned to me and said how much he had missed my cooking. This, despite the fact that I'd been cooking the entire two years of her employ!

On the weekend, I did the laundry for the first time in ages, and it felt so damn good. Don't get me wrong ... I don't really like laundry (in fact I hate it), but there was a certain happiness in reclaiming my territorym re-establishing my routine and doing things my way.

I know I'll miss certain things that she did to make our lives easier, and I'll certainly long for the on-call babysitting services that we were able to enjoy whenever we wanted to go out at night, but I feel as though there is a certain order restored to my life that has been missing these past couple of years.