Thanks to Homeaglow for sponsoring this post. All thoughts are my own.
School has started and that means that parent’s to-do lists are longer than ever! It also means that I’m here with more tips and tricks that I’ve learned from being a parent the last 18 years. EIGHTEEN YEARS. Two questions…. the first, how is my oldest in college AND the second, how is this blog 18 years old!? I’ve been sharing my parenting thoughts here for almost two decades and I still have more to share so hope you’ll join me for the ride, even if I don’t post here as frequently as I used to back in the golden days of blogging!
This school year I’m sharing the one thing I’ve started doing in the past 3 months that has been such a huge lifesaver….I started outsourcing tasks I don’t like doing. Listen, I work two jobs and have three kids. My 7 year old daughter is, as she likes to say, “well rounded” and keeps me extremely busy. Contrary to what I used to think when my kids were babies, I can’t “do it all”. I used to try and I used to fail miserably. Now I accept the fact that I only have 24 hours in my day and I don’t try to do it all anymore. I outsource. Like many I’ve been ordering grocery delivery for years but just this summer I started sending my laundry to be washed, dried, and folded – and for the very first time, had my house professionally cleaned.
Homeaglow reached out to me about trying their services and I’d never heard of the site before so I checked out their website and saw they were in the Chicago area and it looked great so I jumped on it because, well let’s face it, anyone would be silly to say no to that! Homeaglow is a platform that connects people with background-checked professional house cleaners for an on-demand home cleaning experience and I just have to share my Homeaglow review with you all! I wasn’t sure what to expect but I went online to their website and it was an easy process to schedule a cleaner. I gave my location details, the day and time frame I wanted someone to come, how long I’d need someone to come out for, and what I wanted cleaned. You could even leave a note so I was able to share that I was looking for a deep cleaning of my bathroom and kitchen. Could I have had someone clean my whole house? Sure. But remember, I’m focusing on outsourcing tasks I don’t like doing and the kitchen and bathroom are the two places in my home that are the worst to clean.Â
On the day of the cleaning I was expecting one cleaner but I had a wonderful woman, Naidalith, show up with her teenage daughter and I got two for the price of one. Literally felt like I’d won the lottery. I was able to show them areas I’d really like to focus on and they grabbed the cleaning supplies they’d brought and got to work. While Naidalith got started on deep cleaning the fridge, the daughter was an organizing wizard, and worked on making everything in the kitchen neater. The tupperware? ORGANIZED. The cans on the pantry shelves all disheveled? NEATLY STACKED. The clean dishes? PUT AWAY. Suddenly the chaos of our neurodivergent home seemed much more manageable and having the kitchen and bathroom deep cleaned felt amazing. They even had time to scrub my wooden steps (which was on my list as an “if time” item!), mop my living room floor, and dust! And when they left, my house smelled amazing which is super rare when you have two teenage boys.
At this point you might be thinking ….”But Alicia, that all sounds great but hello it’s 2026 and we are on a budget and can’t afford to have help with tasks.” My answer… Yes, you can! Your first cleaning with Homeaglow is FREE! You can get a free 3-hour cleaning from a top-rated professional cleaner with a 6-month membership. As a member, you can unlock unlimited future cleanings at ~60% off. Their 6-month membership is just $19 for your first month, $59/mo after. After looking at the normal prices of the cleaners I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were much cheaper than any of the quotes I’d seen in my local Facebook groups, and that the membership easily pays for itself. If you do need to cancel your membership before 6 months is up, you will be charged the full price of your first cleaning.
And if you can’t even afford that right now? I get it. Times are tough. So file Homeaglow in your mind as a must-try service when you have the funds and for right now just find a friend that loves doing a task you hate and do a task they hate for them in return. There are people who actually like doing dishes! And laundry! Or at least maybe like them more than other tasks you can do in return for them….and for right now you outsourcing tasks is a barter type arrangement and that is still going to be beneficial to you this school year.
When you take a task you dread off your to-do list it feels AMAZING and gives you more time to do things you actually do enjoy doing (and if you use Homeaglow you have the added benefit of sitting in a clean house while doing so which feels extra wonderful!)