I work three days a week (leave at 7am get home about 5pm) and DH works full time Mon-Fri (he leaves at 7am and gets home between 7pm and 8pm usually) but also regularly brings work home on weekends. I also occasionally have to bring work home on weekends but not as often as DH. While my job is great in terms of hours and I love it, it is emotionally draining and has a reputation for being a stressful field to work in. Lately I am starting to feel quite overwhelmed by the competing demands of work, looking after a toddler, and trying to keep the house in some kind of order.
I am becoming increasingly stressed out and annoyed with myself about my failure to keep on top of the housework. I am finding it impossible to clean the house properly on my days off with a DD. She will entertain herself for just about long enough to load the dishwasher, do a load of laundry, have a quick tidy round the living room etc but that's about it. She's only 15 months so not enough that I can just stick her in front of a DVD and crack on with cleaning the house.
Consequently, a lot of things get left until the weekend when one of us can look after DD while the other gets on with the cleaning. I am starting to resent this as the weekends are the only time we have together as a family due to DH's working hours and most of it gets taken up with jobs like cleaning, ironing, admin, DIY, batch cooking for the week etc. I also feel guilty because whenever DH suggests going out and doing something nice at the weekend my initial response is "I can't, I need to clean the house!". I dread people dropping round unexpectedly and if we have guests coming over we're both running round like headless chickens trying to sort the house out and it sort of takes the enjoyment out of it for me to be honest. DH is always trying to get me to take time for myself and I do crave a bit of alone time these days but I can't relax and enjoy it as there is always something that needs doing. DH is great, very willing to help out around the house but he doesn't have a lot of time and also he doesn't seem to notice the mess as much as me so he'll say "it's fine" when in my mind the place looks like a tip.
I am so tempted to throw money at the problem (even though we're not exactly wealthy) and get a cleaner. I keep thinking about how much it would reduce my stress and although it might be expensive I think I'd rather cut back on other things and not have to worry about the housework while DD is little. Even just a fortnightly clean would take the pressure off. I've thought about all the things in my life that are causing me stress at the moment and come to the conclusion that this is the only thing that I can outsource iyswim.
Would I be ridiculously lazy, entitled etc. to consider this even though i'm at home two days a week? I do realise there are probably lots of people on here who have 3+ small children, work full time, cook everything from scratch and manage to keep a clean house without help so I am prepared to be told IABU and to just get on with it!