Asking For Help

It is not easy to ask someone for help. It is a little easier to ask an unknown audience for help, perhaps because it is less personal?

I wrote a blog sometime back in which I rued aging for the loss of ability to do simple chores. At the time it was changing lightbulbs up high or going to the store to buy special bulbs then bringing them home and installing them. Another chore? Folding sheets from the dryer; they are longer than I am tall, and I don’t have another person handy to hold the other end!

Getting to a higher shelf is an annoyance; now I know what my short mother had to face every day of her life! But for us, we just move things to a lower shelf and keep higher space for long-term storage that a family member can retrieve for us sometime in the future.

At the moment we have trouble keeping the house clean. I never did floors well, but now we don’t have the stamina to push the vacuum around, or a bunch of other things. For my part I keep my bathroom neat, tidy and pretty clean. That only takes daily care and a good wipe down frequently. The other bathroom belongs to the spouse and he doesn’t do well in that department. Then again, he is severely limited physically.

We did have a lovely woman housecleaner but she got sick and couldn’t keep us on her schedule any longer. She visited us monthly for a small $75 fee. At least the bathrooms and kitchen were cleaned thoroughly once each month. In between cleanings we just had to be careful and clean up spills when they happened.

Finding another cleaner for that low fee is difficult.

Meanwhile, hospice duties keep me busy and in need of frequent naps. The patient cannot do any of this work himself. So, we learn to live in clutter and dust.

It should be easy to ask for help, but it isn’t. Others we would ask are busy with their own lives, and most have cleaners to help. Why pay for their own services while donating personal labor to our home? Seems tacky to me. So, I don’t ask.

I would pay for this for $75 per month. I wonder if anyone would be interested? Perhaps I should just ask?

April 5, 2023

 

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