Not only do I no longer have to clean the bathrooms and kitchen floors myself, but having a cleaning lady come actual helps minimize the clutter in our apartment. I'm a clean person, and can be organized when I want to, but I'm not very neat. I have a tendency to let papers and other odds & ends pile up all over place. I swear, my clothes have a mind of their own and don't appreciate getting put back in the closet or on a shelf after I have worn them. They much prefer to be strewn around the whole apartment taunting Adam! He's the complete opposite - Adam can keep the paper clutter to a minimum and is better about hanging his clothes up, but it would take him ages to notice that the bathroom is funky. We pre-clean for the cleaning lady, so she doesn't need to work around our junk. The bi-weekly cleaning lady visits help maintain marital bliss!
We first decided to get a cleaning lady after I accepted the job in NYC. I was only home 3 days a week, I had my hands full enough as it was without being responsible for the cleaning... since Adam was unlikely to pick up the slack to the level I would be happy with, we decided hiring someone was worth the expense, especially since I had gotten a pay bump. We had grown quite accustom to not doing the cleaning ourselves, so we kept her on when I returned to a Philly job. She's worth every penny! Besides, the laundry, ironing, and odd projects around the house (like my sudden urge to clean out the fridge) still keep me plenty busy.