Oh, Flower.

My first confession (and some of you already know this) is that we have a cleaning lady. Yes, I work from home, have Fridays off, but hear me out.... Before she cleaned our house, I'd like to think our house was pretty dang clean all the time. Stefan and I are both neat freaks and like a clean house and I was a little confused as to why he was trying to convince me to hire her. We got her name from one of Stefan's co-workers and we figured we'd give it a shot--- once a month to do a deep clean and all the things I hate doing (toilets, dusting the blinds, cleaning the baseboards, etc.). We can easily take care of the rest. The night we came home from work after she had cleaned our house for the first time, I think our jaws dropped to the floor. Our house looked brand new. The carpets looked brand new, and we were afraid to mess up the lines on our suede couch. She is amazing! All this time, we thought we did a great job cleaning, and then she comes along and shows us up.

Now, her name is Flower. Well, Stefan's co-worker calls her Flora, but we write the check to Florencia. I like Flower and that's how she introduced herself so that's what we're going with.

The one thing about "Flower" that normally would drive me crazy, is how she puts things back in our house. I don't know how she manages to move our giant couch to vacuum under it-- there's no way I could do this on my own, I have no clue how she does it. Sometimes I wonder what she's thinking when she puts things back the way she does. I captured a few things for you to see what I'm talking about....

Looks normal, Right? Notice the drawers and where they pull out. How the heck am I supposed to get anything out of the drawers if they're pushed up against a jewelry cabinet?!

It's cool, we'll turn our heads to the right whenever we wanna see this picture.

Good thing Stefan never sees this blog.

He likes his shoes a certain way.... and it's obviously not the way she put them back this time.

I don't think the holes for the toothbrushes were meant to hold the toothpaste.

Towel art.

Hotel Thorn.

While she does a great job cleaning every single bottle, she doesn't always put them back in the "right place" or the exact angle where she found them.

To clarify, this post is in no way, shape, or form an intention to complain about our beloved Flower. I would much rather come home to things put back in weird places than to not have her clean our house because she really does an amazing job.

It just makes me laugh.... and really curious about what her house looks like :)

Working from home...

I couldn't be more thankful for the flexibility in my job that allows me to work from home on a regular basis. I live about 45 minutes away from the office, and the drive really has never bothered me. But once you get in the habit of NOT having to get up at 5am, and NOT driving 27 miles to work each way, and NOT having a crazy drycleaning bill, or NOT having to fill up my car every few days, and NOT having to pay over $400 a month in doggie daycare..... it's hard to switch back! I've gained my independence in this role and it's forced me to really figure things out on my own and take ownership in my time management and project management skills.


While I absolutely love seeing the people in my office, a lot of the times I have a ton of work that needs to get done and I'm actually a lot more productive at home. When I tell most people I work from home, they respond with, "Oh, I would never be able to do that. I'd be too tempted to watch TV or do other things around the house." The reality is, sometimes put a load of laundry in, or run to the post office, or call my dad in the middle of the day.... but as long as my work gets done by the deadline, that's all that really matters in the end. I end up being more productive at home because I don't have as many distractions. I have music playing but don't think I've ever had the TV on for more than background noise-- it's weird. My dogs can't carry on a conversation for 45 minutes, so they're not much of a distraction either.



My work in the office days:

• Alarm clock goes off at 4:30am, get out of bed around 5am
• Drop the dogs off at daycare by 6am
• Drop off Stefan at work around 6:45am
• Work by 7am
• Pick up Stefan from work around 5pm
• Pick up the dogs around 6pm
• Home by 6:30pm
• Dinner, then log back into my computer and do a little more work at home
• Length of my day: about 14 hours
• Amount of work that realistically gets done: 9-11 hours
• Time spent driving, running errands, socializing, etc: 3-5 HOURS!!!!!!! 

My work from home days:

• Alarm goes off at 6:30am, get out of bed by 6:55am
• Work starts around 7am
• Done around 6pm, sometimes earlier/sometimes later
• Stefan drives to work by himself and the dogs stay home with me.
• Length of my day: 11 hours
• Amount of work that gets done: 10-11 hours
• Time spent driving, running errands, socializing: um.... maybe 20 minutes if I have an errand to run.

Even though I still feel like an idiot learning my "new" job, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Having the flexibility and awesome "work environment" is so worth it!


...even when I have these two craving for attention :)