Boat Cleaning

Now that I am back at work the house chores have really been getting away from me. So much so that last week after a screaming fit Mark smashed the life out of two unwelcome guests who were not paying rent to stay on our boat (the dreaded cockroaches) EEEEkkkkkk! Things were obviously out of control!
We had started about a month ago out sourcing our laundry.  It was just piling up and we realised that $7 a wash at the mini mart was a great deal but the added cost of time of actually finding quarters, washing it (I can't just drop it off and leave it for the day; not very neighbourly for the other marina tenants), and then folding it and putting it away was too expensive really.  We couldn't get anything else done on weekends, and things were starting to deteriorate.
We researched local laundry mats and our solution was a small local business nearby my school. The routine is now that I can drop it off first thing in the morning and pick it up either than afternoon or the following morning. Its quite reasonable, had cut down on saving quarters, and the only time I spend is putting away the laundry at the end of the day. I still do the kids laundry in the mini mart (or at one of the grandparents homes on family visits) as I have special detergent and its a bit weird to drop off kids clothes I guess.  Marley is also doing extremely well with sleeping through the night but we still have the occasional accidents that require immediate laundering. 
Then last week Mark and the kids were home sick one day with the flu and Mark must have had a dose of my crazy pills as his O.C.D. kicked in and he "couldn't believe the amount of dirt that was on our boat".  Hahahaha haven't I been saying that for weeks I thought? But sometimes you have to let them figure it out on their own.  Instead of him resting as he should have been on his sick day he ended up using "roll-off" on all the plastic fans, and wiping down the picture frames and counter tops.  We finally decided together this was over our heads.  Living on a boat, working full time jobs, volunteering all that we do, and raising two kids was causing things to loose rank. We had toyed with the idea of hiring a cleaning service when I was pregnant, tired and having a hard time getting everything done but it never formulated.  Plus who would come and clean a boat? Not everyone is familiar with products you can use to clean a marine toilet vs a household toilet so that's a problem first and foremost. We research a little and there was someone in the marina that could probably do it but then I was home for the year and had plenty of free time to get all the cleaning done (all the S.A.H.M. are laughing their asses off now). But I was able to stay on top of things for the most part until Sept.
Last week we made the decision to give it a go.  Today was the first day I came home and things were tidy, put away, the dishes were done.... I didn't even want to use the head it was so sparkly clean :) :) While we have gone back and forth with the idea of "we potentially can do this ourselves and we are never going to be able to get on top off all of this" I couldn't be more than happy with our choice to have a cleaner come once a week to pick up our slack.
I think these are steps in the right direction to making sure our priorities are in check.  The reality is that we can do all of these things however we are determined to make the most out of our boat living, raising our kids on boats experience and while we will still do our own laundry and clean up after ourselves the occasional helping hand does not hurt.  In fact it allows us to do what we love most. Spend quality time with our children, on our boat <3