At one time, I hired a maid to come in once a week on Thursday to help out my wife. She had 4 children under 2 years of age, as well as the normal house stuff. She was terribly hurt and fired the maid. She felt I was telling her she wasn't up to the job of being a wife and mother. I don't think she would fire the maid should I hire one now, though.
We used cloth diapers, as we were going through up to 60 diapers daily. My job was to wash the diapers as my wife couldn't handle the 30-gallon trash can we used as a diaper pail. We only used disposables when we were travelling.
I hired a maid when I was working and she came exactly ONE time. I couldn't stand the thought of someone being in my house; it just wasn't for me. I think I could deal with it now, though. My MIL had three babies in 11 months. My husband and his brother (twins) and their older sister who was 11 months old when they were born. MIL hung diapers on the line every day of the week.
Things slowed down for me after retirement to to a severe fall injury 6 days after I retired. It aged me tens years physically, so yeah, things slowed.
That is the thing. We probably all used cloth diapers, back in the good old days. I only had two babies close together. But I remember using paper diapers that became wadded up clumps of something, as soon as wet, once. I can't imagine anyone today using them and hanging them outside to dry. Saved a lot of money and landfill space. But who has the time today with all the time saving devices?
Sorry to hear that Don, I just lost a sister about a few months ago to a fall. Hit her head, she said, before passing that she doesn't even know what happened.
I am still busy, but in a different way. Although I have more things to do than I make the time to do, more of it is under my control now, and I don't always choose to do the things that I should do. Sometimes I do other things, while, at other times, I sleep in until 2:00, as I did yesterday. It's not my fault, I swear; Ella didn't want to get up.
More things to do for me than I have time or energy for, it seems. Then I'm always looking in any direction and seeing more things that need to be done, and it makes me feel sort of guilty. Probably like that for some others too and I was wondering how they deal with it. Thanks for sharing that Ken and Ella will have let you up so you can have more time to do your chores.