Sunshine and Weekend Confidence

Last weekend the June Gloom lifted, the sun shone, the trees were ablaze with blossom and yet, despite the cloudless skies, not that many people in my neighborhood thought: “Right. I shall take a chair and a beer into my garden and spend the afternoon enjoying the long-awaited seasonal warmth or I will ride off to the beach with a picnic in the trunk.”

This is because sunshine releases endorphins that causes everyone to think they are capable of doing Household chores or DIY projects.

I’m no different normally, which is why on the first really warm weekend of the season last year, I was known to jump out of bed with a renewed vigor and rather than enjoying the weather, I decided I was going to build a gazebo.

Why I ever thought that is beyond me and anyone that knows me. Even though, I have run my own Construction Company and was a plasterer by trade, there’s never been any evidence in my whole life that I could even saw a piece of wood in two, let alone build a gazebo.

My woodwork teacher at school said that I was a “complete imbecile” and pointed out that the bird house I’d taken three years to make, had a greater resemblance to a wooden giraffe.

Regardless of this, off I went to my nearest Home Depot store, where I spent roughly the same amount of money as it would have cost to buy the entire City of Simi Valley on some wood, glue, screws and some shiny new tools, all of which make more noise than a F22 Raptor Fighter Jet that frequently fly over the skies of Camarillo. In fact, I’m not overly convinced that these are planes unless I can actually see them, and that they are more likely to be Bill, who lives just up the street, building a new front porch.

DIY tools are specifically designed to be loud so that the neighbors who actually are sitting in their gardens doing nothing, feel quite compelled by the noise to get off their rear ends and make some noise of their own, while they attempt to make a bird table or a bench.

So, I set about cutting some wood. This was a mistake as soon after I had started, I had sawn off my left thumb and was bleeding profusely.

But after running my hand under the tap for a while, a band aid and a beer, and then some more beer to help with the pain, I soon forgot that I was building a gazebo and didn’t remember again until the next morning.

When I started the next day, thanks to the noisy tools and a lot of luck, I soon had the wood cut to the right length, apart from three pieces, which were too short.

This is because the tape measure had given a false reading. All tape measures do this every so often – they throw out an obscure figure here and there, just to make whatever you are building all lob sided.

Eventually though, after only three or four more trips to the store for some more wood, I had glued the frame of my new gazebo together, and to the patio furniture, the fence it was resting on and to my trousers.

After sorting that mess out, which had only taken until later the following weekend, it was time to screw it all together.

I spent the whole of Sunday morning sawing and nailing and drilling and bleeding and drinking until eventually my gazebo was done. And I offered it up proudly to the part of the garden where it would live.

Only to find it was somehow two feet too short and that I had managed to give myself a hernia. Which would later have a detrimental effect on our long-planned road trip from San Francisco back down PCH.

What I Really Should Have Done

On a similar theme, last weekend, my wife; Lizzie went to a well-deserved spa day at the Four Seasons in Westlake Village and I had to spend the day taking care of our 5-year-old daughter, which to be fair is always a blast as she is such great fun. But before I could plan our day of fun, I was given a short list of chores to complete before we could enjoy the day. The first one; take Amelia-Rose to gymnastics at Coach Patty’s. OK, that is easy and not really a chore. I enjoy that especially seeing how well she is doing and how much she enjoys it. The next was to “quickly take the vacuum around the lounge, a quick dust, clean the master bathroom and kitchen”. Well of course, it would need to be cleaned, because by the time Amelia and I return from gymnastics, it would have been a whole hour and a half since it was last cleaned before Lizzie left for her relaxing spa day.

So around 10:30, we returned from Gymnastics and I set about the easy task of cleaning. Being the co-owner of a maid service, you’d think I’d find this a walk in the park. WRONG!!

I don’t get to clean our clients homes. We have specially trained and vetted maids that do that far better. Besides, we are busy in the office, as well as visiting new and regular clients that there simply is not enough time in the day.

I ended up spending the remainder of Saturday morning and into the afternoon mopping and stopping for a cup of coffee and vacuuming and then stopping for some more coffee and scrubbing and then stopping for another coffee and dusting before finishing with one more coffee until eventually it was all done.

I was beat. By this time, my daughter pointed the time out and that “mummy would be home soon”. It had taken me nearly 5 hours to complete minus an hour for coffee breaks but when you’re cleaning your own home, you do that. You get distracted and you drink coffee or maybe even some wine.

Now there’s a valuable lesson to be learned here on both events.

My wife cleans our house roughly every 30 minutes each evening, no, that is not a mistype, she really does clean the house every 30 minutes. If she has trouble sleeping at night, unlike most people who will pick up their phones, scroll through Facebook and look at pictures of people’s lunch, she gets up and dusts the house. So, our house never gets a chance to get dirty. And yet, I had spent the most part of my Saturday cleaning an already clean house. We don’t have our maids clean our own house often because they’d not have anything to do as it genuinely never gets a chance to get dirty due to Lizzie’s incessant cleaning. But we never trip up anyone who is remotely like my wife and says they “really love to clean”, except for our maids.

I felt bad for our daughter last weekend, because I had promised her a Daddy & Daughter Day of Fun, but she had to entertain herself whilst waiting for me to get through the grueling job of cleaning the house that I had little inclination to do anything else that afternoon. We just about managed a dip at the pool before Lizzie returned from having some sort of weird thick black paste applied to her face before allowing it to set like a plaster cast and then having it chiseled of with a power chisel or whatever it is they do at a spa day.

But here’s my point. There are no amateur dentists. There are no amateur vets. There are no amateur doctors or chiropractors or beauty therapists. So why do we think there can be such a thing as an amateur carpenter? Or plumbers? Or cleaners?

If you want some brain surgery done, you go to a brain surgeon. If you want a new nose, you go to a plastic surgeon. If you want a new wall, you call a bricklayer. And if you want a clean house, you should call You’ve Got Maids.

There are lots of sunny weekends coming up in the next several months and I have a great tip. Spend all of them doing something you enjoy or even doing nothing. But whatever you do, do not waste time doing something you most likely loathe to do and are not very good at. Like cleaning your house.

You’ve Got Maids of Thousand Oaks, Malibu & Camarillo offers a full service weekly, bi-weekly or monthly maid service. We also offer 52 Point Spring Cleans, Move in or Move Out Cleans, Pre-Party or After Party Cleans.

Our Maids are all background checked and drug screened. They all have to pass a comprehensive training program. We are licensed, bonded and insured and we offer a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee.