ut you last post is the stressed part. You or anyone can not make that assumption of who is more stressed. You do not know their life. When I had breast cancer, my garden was my outlet for stress more than any other time in my life. I wintersowed very slowly because I could hardly do it, but it gave me a sense of purpose and things to come in the spring. I dreamed through the catalogs of what to buy believing I would be there to live to see them bloom. I tended my plants best I could in spring. I'm sorry I'm getting teary eyed now. I'm sorry. I know what cancer is like. My dad had chemical based leukemia, 14% chance of survival.. he didn't. Treatment was horrible, he did a clinical trial, I have to say that what he went through in the month plus that he was doing the clinical trial, I don't know why anyone would fight that particular cancer. Back to the garden & plants. When he came out of the hospital he was greeted by plants. My hubby, son & I worked really hard to plant his vegetable garden at his new house (it closed a week after being diagnosed) plus I duplicated my gardens at his house. We'd dug up a few of his roses, plus I bought more. I even bought a daylily that was not common, which I now call Matty for him. He was speechless when he came home. We used to like to sit on his porch & watch the butterflies & hummingbirds. While he wasn't allowed near the plants due to his particular type of cancer, he could sit there and enjoy it. He wasn't allowed to eat his veggies either until he went into remission a few months later. His guardian angel gave us really warm weather until November, we were able to have his Hungarian peppers in my stuffing for Thanksgiving. Through his whole nightmare, gardening & plants brightened the time he was out of the hospital. I'm not able to buy a lot of plants any more due to my back problems. There's a reason why I haven't added many photos to helpmefind, I'm not able to walk around the garden like I used to. I do want to buy a few roses next year & will probably be buying from David Austin. Since I'll use a regular credit card, I doubt I'll have issues and so far have not had a bad experience the last time we ordered. I'd ordered a Benjamin Britten rose, it was horrible, a phone call or email with no questions asked and they replaced it.

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Thanks for the replies. It does help me to know that one, I'm not the only one that find this level of "service" unacceptable, and two, that there are indeed people that would rather do the cleaning themselves. I still have much to sort out as to whether I want to continue to try having a cleaning person or would rather do it myself. But in the meantime, we are going on vacation and I already planned to put them on hold for the time we are away and just a bit thereafter. Probably 3 weeks off altogether. That will give me time to access the feeling of NOT having a cleaning service. Assuming I still want to go that route, I plan to call Wilma and explain the situation. Despite everything, she is a very nice woman, and one that I actually trust (to my knowledge, theft is one problem I have not experienced with our current cleaners). To be fair, I have not really said much to convey how unhappy I am (in part because I've barely seen her in recent weeks). I'd like to give her the chance to improve things. I will make a list of the things I want addressed and make very sure that she understands what I'm looking for. After that, if I'm still unhappy at least I'll know I did everything in my power to articulate my expectations, and I'll feel free to move on. I got a few new referrals from some friends last night that I will hold onto. I'll admit, I really do have to fight the feeling of not liking people in my house. In our house, my biggest problem is my own inconsistency. There are times when I enjoy cleaning and it almost feels cathartic. However, there are also times, due to our difficulties with our son, that it becomes nearly impossible to keep up and the house heads south VERY quickly. So until I can maintain some level of consistency on my own, I guess I'll have to continue on with a cleaning service. Perhaps if I spend a little time tweaking things, I'll end up being very happy. Thanks again. :)

I've always thought that we should be able to do it ourselves (me and DH) and couldn't justify the expense for a regular cleaning service (say every 2 weeks). I had a cleaning lady come only once or twice a year and I worked alongside her to do the "spring" cleaning. I keep the apartment always picked up, floors "swiffered" 3-6 times a week, mopped 1-2 times a month, furniture dusted once a week, bathtub and tile scrubbed every 2 weeks, sink/toilet/counter twice a week, balcony once a month, kitchen 2-3 times a day. I may clean something small here and there throughout the year especially when I reorganize, but never could keep up with things like windows and curtains, walls and doors, vacuuming the couches, cleaning the light fixtures, or even the fridge or the oven. Reading all of your responses helped me decide on the following plan (Oh! Forgot to mention there's four of us now: DD1 is 19 months and DD2 is 4 months old): I'll have a cleaning lady come once a month and work alongside her to thoroughly clean one room each time in the greatest possible detail (rotating) while in the rest of the apartment we only dust, swiffer, mop, clean bathroom and sweep and mop balcony. This way the whole apartment (732 sq ft, 850 including the balcony) will be cleaned completely 2 times a year (when I had her for the spring cleaning we were never able to do it completely in that one day - something was always left undone, perhaps for years) and it will be a tad less work for me to maintain. Maria