A few days ago, I decided I could afford a housekeeper. The math is simple, right? If I work x number of hours at y rate, I’ll be earning more money than if I work x number of hours cleaning my house. Thus I can pay someone to clean my house while I make more money.

Sounded simple, at least.

I decided that all I had to do was to give up daily Americanos or hunker down and do more work on Saturdays.

But here’s the thing: I already gave up the daily Americanos, and I’m already trying to work on Saturday. At this point in my career as a freelance writer, I just don’t have disposable income. I have enough money in the business and personal checking accounts for about a month of expenses, and I have enough in savings for about 3/4 of a month. I have quite a few unpaid invoices on the books, but unpaid invoices won’t pay my rent. There’s no buffer there. And there’s certainly not a stipend in there for a luxury like a housekeeper.

This thought became very clear to me as I worked last week to paint my old apartment. A friend of mine who no longer worries about bouncing checks said, “Beth, just leave it and let the landlord take it out of the deposit.” That sounded like a good idea when I was in “justify a housekeeper” mode. But my deposit is $875. And $875 is a hell of a lot of money. And I spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday trying to make sure I get as much of that $875 back as humanly possible. The picture is me in the final stages of turning a Caribbean Blue kitchen back to Swiss Coffee.

I’m actually having a housekeeping team come by today. I scheduled them before I decided not to use them, and I put aside the money to pay them. (In fact, the day I put the money aside was the day I realized how crazy it was to hire housekeepers. How was I going to come up with the next visit’s money?) I didn’t cancel them for today because this weekend is my open house here at Avenue Z, and I really want everything to shine.  I’m so excited!