My anxiety is high just thinking about the dirty floors, loads of laundry, and dust that lines my fans. It taunts me when I turn them on, the dust hanging on by a thread, threatening to come sailing down to the ground, adding to the floors that are most certainly not clean enough to eat off of.

Okay. Okay. It wasn’t that bad but with my high anxiety, cleanliness is something that always added to my worry. With a house full of people, one of them a toddler, clean was always a relative term. No matter how prepared I made sure we were on the weekends, Monday came and it looked like I didn’t own a broom.

Then someone suggested I hire a cleaning service. Someone to come weekly, biweekly, whatever I wanted to help out and ease a bit of my worry. I felt odd even reaching out for quotes because why couldn’t I keep up with the mess? Why couldn’t I put aside my anxiety for two seconds to let my house just be.

But my husband put it into perspective for me. We both have busy schedules, and work from home. Our home is more than a place we are occasionally at after a long day, it’s our main focal point. Our work space, playground, a place we meet for lunch dates as we both leave our respective corners where we work.  A playground for our toddler who we somehow manage to keep home as we both work full-time. And a teenage hangout for when my daughter has friends over.

Our home is so much more than it used to be. The cleanliness helps focus, productivity, and enjoyment. So the cleaning service, while initially I felt defeated reaching out for help, has been a game changer.

While I do still need to keep things tidy, I don’t see dust bunnies taunting me as I try to watch a movie after a hard day (and promptly feel compelled to get on my hands and knees and remove them all) or the toddler handprints strategically placed right across the TV screen so you can’t see what’s going on. I see a home, my place of work, my solitude.

I hired a cleaning service for my sanity and to relieve any little bit I could on my increasing anxiety.  Things right now aren’t easy for many and anything we can do to relieve ourselves of stress, worry, and anxiety should be welcomed with open arms.

So hire that cleaning service or dog walker, order groceries online and pick them up. Do whatever it takes to help yourself because you deserve it.