I hope you all had a nice, relaxing Christmahanaquanzika!
Now comes the hard part: finding space in your home for the gifts you received!
I am lucky this year in that two of my three family gatherings (we have a lot of family!) were gift exchanges. Each person only had to purchase one gift, and left with only one gift. This makes things easier on the wallet, and easier for the recovering pack rat.
My other family gathering usually has lots of gifts, and this year was no exception. 
I’m lucky again, however, in the my family respects my wish not to get buried in more “stuff” for the holidays. In the spirit of decluttering, I got a few gift cards this year.
I love gift cards! They are easy to carry and easy to organize, which makes them a great gift for any cluttered person, especially ones that are for services/consumables instead of for purchasing more stuff.
This year I was given a couple gift certificates to Red Lobster and Cineplex, so that my husband and I can go on a few nice “dates”. Dinner and a movie, anyone? I’m pretty sure we’ll end up going to see Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. I’m a little worried about Sherlock Holmes, since I’m a huge fan of the original novels and the old 80s TV series and this new movie seems more like James Bond, but I’m looking forward to seeing it anyway.
The best gift card I received, however, was a $100 card for Molly Maid! I’ve never had a cleaning service before, so that’s pretty exciting.
Unfortunately… that’s all they are. A cleaning service. I don’t usually need as much help cleaning as I do tidying up. My house isn’t really dirty, just messy. Errr, ok, so my house could use a good cleaning. It’s hard to vacuum when there’s stuff all over the floor, and I haven’t even swept the entry way in a few weeks due to the hustle and bustle of the season. *sigh*
I am very thankful for this gift, but I must admit that it is stressing me out a bit. In order to use this gift certificate, I need to get the house in shape to be thoroughly cleaned. I need to get the stuff off the floor, off the counter, off the table, and back to where it belongs. I am going to have to set myself a deadline to get the house “cleaner ready”. If I called them today for a consultation in order to use the card, I’d feel ashamed of the mess, ashamed about what it says about me to strangers, and I’d feel worried that they’d think I was trying to make their job harder by making it so difficult to complete their tasks.
Have any of you ever used a service like Molly Maid? How does it work, exactly? How much would you say you have to clean up before the cleaners arrive?
Photo by me (Caitlin)! My cat Dax carefully inspects our gifts after we return home.
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Yep, used Molly Maid. Loved the service. They came over every other week and my house was always pretty presentable because of this AND because yep, I had to tidy up before they came over to clean. Who doesn’t?
So worst case scenario was that only 2 weeks worth of clutter could accumulate between their visits…it was great!!!!!
I wonder how far $100 will go. Hopefully I can get a couple visits out of it. That sounds really nice!
Fortunately my family mostly does Christmas on a cash basis. I did get a couple of physical gifts, but they are small and attractive and will be fairly easy to store/display/use.
I definitely share your concerns about the cleaning service. I can’t imagine inviting someone over to clean my place the way it is now–it would be an exercise in futility.
How is your new place coming along these days? We should get together and spend a day at each of our places and see what we can do!
That’s really your kitty? She’s sooo cute! What does Dax mean.
I <3 gift cards!
Dax is the name of a character from Star Trek: DS9 (we’re nerds!)
Avatar was pretty good. Def see it if you get in for free with your card.
I plan to, thanks!
Hmm, this is weird. I was trying to leave a comment on the next post, the one with the Get Smart pic and “leave a comment” sends me here. I thought I’d scrolled up to the wrong post the 1st time and tried again but it’s definitely on your end and not user error.
Anyway, I wanted to ask if the change in domains had anything to do with why some pictures weren’t appearing. In particular, the ones of your house as it was being built. You had a post about a wall going up and all that shows is the flickr picture number, no photo.
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Thank you so much for letting me know about the issue, I will look into it right away! I don’t want people to not be able to leave comments!
Actually, the Flickr pictures not working was apparently my fault, not due to the domain change. I had disabled a Flickr plugin, and I thought I’d gone through all the posts that used it and corrected them. I’ve since re-enabled the plugin, so the images should be back [wall post]
My mom has used a cleaning service for as long as I remember. She was always at work and I was always at school, so the house never got too bad, but we mostly just stuffed our junk in the closets or I at least tried to make a neat pile out of my toys in a corner. I like that they make your bed and fold your toilet paper into a neat little triangle.
I wanted to try Molly Maid also. Some of my friends are talking ’bout them.
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