Free up Your Time, Enjoy Your Life

I work quite hard during the week, I am up at 6am most mornings, sometimes earlier and I can often be caught sending an email or two in the morning amongst the chaos of getting our daughter ready for school or summer camp before we head to the office, where I will send some more emails. And then when I get home, I will send even more. It seems, I am always at a laptop or a computer.

We run a busy cleaning company and we cover a large area, from Camarillo down through the whole of the Conejo Valley and Malibu. So, our weekdays are hectic. Good hectic but nonetheless, hectic. We rarely find time to relax until the weekend, when we will make sure we spend time ensuring we do everything we can do as a family.

I have always been like this. I would try to work as hard as I can in the week and ensure I had time to relax at the weekend. Before I got married and we had our daughter, sometimes I was working 17-18 hour days and to top that, I was often having to drive 50 miles each way to work, depending on what site I was at that day.

I became so stressed that my wife suggested that I tried Yoga one weekend. My local gym had a class and I decided I would book myself into a class without researching if they were any good at it.

First of all, the instructor had the voice of a gerbil and invited me to lie on the floor in a room full of white noise song that is played at exactly the right volume necessary to make her instructions perfectly inaudible.

Occasionally you pick up a snippet in which she is saying, very softly, that you should adopt a position called the downward dog, or the duck, seagull or plank, and of course I had no clue what any of this means but I knew one thing, I felt like a complete plank. Of course, I wouldn’t know what any of that meant. Why would I? This Yoga class was designed to be unfathomable, a bit like the English game of Cricket, so that old heads can roll their eyes when a new boy mistakes the duck for a hedgehog. Or accidentally becomes a frog.

The only way really of knowing what you’re supposed to be doing is by looking across to see what your neighbor’s up to, but I don’t recommend this, as the position they’ve adopted is almost always either impossible or disgusting. Once, I noticed the woman next to me had cut herself in two and was using her tongue as her toes.

My biggest problem, however, is that my body can only really be body-shaped.

Lying on my tummy with my legs, arms and bottom pulled up over my head so that I resemble a treble clef is therefore extremely uncomfortable. This is why I spent the first 25 minutes grimacing and swearing.

Eventually the gerbil woman came over to see what was wrong, and I explained that I hadn’t been as unrelaxed since I was on a commercial airline that was experiencing severe turbulence and hurtling towards Texas at about 400mph.

“May I adjust your body?” she said soothingly. “Yes,” I grunted.

And with that, she gently pulled my right leg back until it came off in her hands. The pain was excruciating, so I got to my left foot, snatched my right leg off her and hopped out of the room. After having my right leg reattached at the nearest hospital, I spent the next few days with a very pronounced and uncomfortable limp.

Before I hopped out, she told me that “yoga was first practiced 5,000 years ago”. Yes, it was. But human sacrifice was also practiced 5,000 years ago but that doesn’t give us carte blanche to spend your afternoons plunging a sword into your neighbor’s intestines.

I clearly had not researched this class. The reviews for this tutor left a lot to be desired and it seemed evident I had clearly attended a sadomasochism class instead. I still wake in a cold sweat thinking of what else I may have been subjected to had I have stayed for the rest of the class.

The reason I write about this now several years on, is that the subject came up recently with one of our new clients. Her husband had told her she was working too hard, was getting bogged down with chores and she wasn’t taking enough time to unwind. He booked us to carry out a weekly clean and signed her up for a wonderful Yoga class in Malibu but like me, she was dubious as she had experienced a similar scenario to me, however, she reliably informs me that this class at Malibu Beach Yoga is amazing, welcoming and helpful for beginners and worse still, she insisted that I should check them out.

Whilst I am sure she is right, I am not quite sure Malibu, or any other town on God’s earth for that matter, is ready to see me in a tight skimpy yoga outfit again, but when I think they are well prepared, I will be sure to check these guys out.

Our new client says that since we have started to clean her home, her quality of life has improved. She has free time to do things she enjoys doing, her mind is more focused and she is less stressed – which as much as we at You’ve Got Maids would like to take credit for this, I think that is more to do with the Yoga. She has even said, she has had the time to visit her two favorite restaurants in the area (twice); Lure Fish House in Camarillo and Mastro’s in Thousand Oaks.

And that is what we do. We don’t just clean houses. We free up people’s time so that they can enjoy life.

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 with a 90% pass mark.

We are licensed, bonded and insured and we offer a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee.

Call us on 805-917-6243 or email us at thousandoaks@youvegotmaids.com