Cleaner coming tomorrow for 1st time, house is a tip...

[wildstrawberryplace]

She is going to do 2 hours twice a week.

My house needs decluttering, the plan was to have it at least decluttered and ready for regular cleaning before her first session, it's been ongoing but various things have cropped up meaning that the place is a tip.

Piles of charity shop destined bags and clean clothes and washing upstairs in the bedrooms, piles of stuff in the living room ready for Ebaying, plus various stacks of books and papers toys all over the place as we've just swapped over the playroom and study and it isn't really settled yet.

I feel very but in my defence, I've been suffering from depression, severe anaemia, just got over two consecutive bouts of bacterial tonsillitis etc.

The whole point of the cleaner was because I just haven't been coping and it adds to my low mood and anxiety when the house is a mess.

I already postponed her first session due to me not being "ready", so can't put it off any longer.

Obviously I don't expect her to deal with the chaos, I just want her to clean the kitchen, bathrooms and do the hall and stairs.

Do you think that's OK? Or do I need to run round like a headless chicken sorting everything. I was hoping to carry on with it during the week so that it's done for next time...

Don't be daft.

She isn't stupid. If we were organized tidy and clean she would be jobless.
I do 'tidy' as in pick up DS's towels and DD reading books and stack the ironing etc, so that she can get at the stuff that needs to be cleaned.
But just tell her when she turns up that it is a bit out of control and you are trying to get on top of it and then negotiate what YOU want her to do first - and make sure she is on board IYSWIM.

If it were me I would like to get an area tidy so I would chose one or two rooms ( depending on the mess) and ask her to concentrate in there .
So, for example,last week DS1s art was all over the place ( exam work) so I asked her to stack all his papers, throw out the newspaper, clean the table, sweep the floor etc before doing the rest of the ground floor ( she would normally do upstairs too). Just chose work that will give you maximum pleasure to be tidy and give her sufficient time to do it. And enjoy

She is a cleaner. She doesn't expect you to be clean already

I'm sure she'll have seen worse, and I'm sure she can work around it. It might just mean that she won't be able to be as thorough as she will be when it's fully decluttered.

I'm by the way

Oh and while she is there take some of the bags to the charity shop and get a nice cup of coffee somewhere

Thanks, your voices of reason literally cut me off mid-gibber there . I'm just going to make sure the bits I want her to do are clutter free, and I'm going to bugger off and leave her to it when she gets here!