20 Nov The Surprising Secret to Happiness I Found in My Laundry Cupboard
Helen McKinnon’s blues bite the dust when she hires a cleaner.
The Day Happiness Snuck Up on Me
Last Saturday morning, I woke and realised with a shock that I was experiencing happiness. Real, unmistakable happiness. It startled me because it had been years since I’d felt anything close. Still, I recognised the feeling and decided to confess it to my regular swimming friends—carefully, because no one wants to endure a relentlessly cheerful person at dawn.
But one friend offered a gem of wisdom: “It’s probably because your house is clean.” She was right. Nothing else had changed. Last week, I’d finally employed a cleaner. Could it really be that simple? Could I be that simple? All those years imagining myself a moody artistic enigma, grappling with deep questions of identity… when really, all I needed for happiness was a disinfected bathroom and a vacuumed hallway.
When Doing It Myself Wasn’t Working
For years, I’d harangued the other members of the household into helping, but any victory was short-lived. Most “tidying” simply involved transferring clothes from floor to washing basket—not exactly transformative.
My partner’s attempts were well-meaning but dramatic. Every time he washed the dishes, he looked like a weary martyr in a Greek tragedy. He’d stand over the sink, stoically battling Mount Suds, with the slow drip… drip… drip of water onto the floor sending the clear message: I work, work, work and still she wants more. Hard to stay happy when your blood is quietly boiling beside the cutlery drawer.
Letting Someone Else Take the Load
So despite my reservations, I hired a cleaner. Not without guilt—I even cleaned the toilets before she arrived. (A universal instinct, surely.) I couldn’t sit watching TV with my feet on the coffee table while someone else scrubbed around me.
But once she left, glistening with the sweat of honest labour, the relief washed over me. I paid the bill and breathed out, deeply, like I’d been holding my lungs hostage for a decade. And, just like that, happiness arrived. Not complicated, not mysterious. Just clean floors.
Turns Out Maslow Might Have Been Onto Something
Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ suddenly made perfect sense. Before a person can reach the lofty peak of self-actualisation, the basics—safety, food, shelter—need to be in order. And clearly, by shelter he meant “recently scrubbed kitchen” and “toilet bowl that sparkles like an Instagram reel.”
I began wondering whether households with cleaners have more people with “healthy personalities” than those soldiering on without. Cleaners truly have no idea just how important their work is. They aren’t just fighting grime—they’re restoring sanity.
Why We Resist Help… Until We Crack
I’d resisted hiring help for years, thinking it was too Desperate Housewives. Surely a functioning adult should be able to manage their own mess? And what message was I giving my kids? If you drop it on the floor, someone else will pick it up—so by all means, drop away.
A quote from Shantaram haunted me: “The two fastest ways to develop a healthy loathing for the human race… are to serve it food, or clean up after it, on the minimum wage.” I didn’t want to impose that on anyone. But try cleaning up after a family on no wage and see how long your affection lasts.
Happiness, Delivered With a Mop
So, last week, I finally did it. I employed a cleaner. I paid, and then—astonishingly—I felt happy. The real deal. It lasted five whole hours and possibly added years back to my life.
I woke in my clean house, startled my husband with an uncharacteristic good-morning smile, skipped out before anyone could dirty it again, swam like a maniac, and even felt enthusiastic about the weekend.
And no, I wouldn’t have felt as happy if I’d done the cleaning myself. Just like dinner always tastes better when someone else cooks it, a clean house feels infinitely more magical when someone else wields the mop.
After years of soul-searching, the answer to happiness was sitting quietly in the laundry cupboard all along: a mop, a vacuum, a duster, a bottle of bleach—and, for me, someone wonderful hired to use them.
Illustrations by Greg Jackson
