Opinion> Lenore Skenazy> Mom Wants A Home Maid Present For Mother S Day And That S Not A Typo

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Mom Wants a Home Maid Present for Mother's Day (And That's Not a Typo)

Forget about figuring out the whole "What do women want?" In view of the holiday this Sunday, let's focus a little more narrowly: What do mothers co-habitating with sock-shedding husbands, toy-tossing tots and wet-towel-on-the-floor-totally-ignoring teenagers want?

They want (duh!) a maid — a person paid to do what they are unpaid to do. And, increasingly, that's what the very luckiest of them are getting. (If you want to take that as a hint, dear family, just a few days before Mother's Day, which last year you pretty much forgot except for the cards the kids were forced to make at school, one of which said, "Dear Mom, thanks for making spaghetti, sincerely, Morry Skenazy Kolman," feel free.)

"Every year it's getting bigger," said Bill Weaver, district manager of the Maid For You near me. His company sells hundreds of gift certificates this time of year, usually for $150. That's enough to cover a one-time cleaning of the typical apartment where I live (yes, the most ridiculously overpriced place on earth, New York City).

The maids come equipped with special whitener for graying grouting, chemicals to fight mildew and instructions to bravely scrub anywhere any appliance meets the counter. "Those are the areas with a lot of crumbs," Weaver tells his maids, "and if you don't handle that …" Well, Mom might need another present pretty soon. "And I don't know if I'd want to give my mother a rodent gift certificate," he said.

(Then again, it beats a Mother's Day card signed, "sincerely.")

Other maid service agencies are also cleaning up this time of year.

"We'll ask, 'Do you want us to bring a dozen roses?'" said Philip Smith, the entrepreneurial accounts manager at Manhattanmaids.com. But, he added, "Usually they just want the cleaning."

That's what the moms want, too.

Jen Singer is founder of mommasaid.net, a Web site that constantly surveys its readers. "The No. 1 thing they want is someone else to clean their toilets, mop their floors and do their dishes," Singer said.

Hey — don't forget laundry. And if you could get someone to sift through the kids' backpacks, tossing out the furry sandwiches and uncrumpling the forms marked "URGENT," that would be lovely, too. But most lovely of all?

A sock sucker — someone or something to suck up all the socks on the floor.

"Everyone in the family except me takes off their socks when they relax," a mother of three teens, Lori Barrette, said. "You know how they just sort of curl up when you use your other foot to take them off? Somehow socks are always everywhere." And somehow her children and husband never notice them.

A maid would. A maid would also notice drooping plants to be watered, smushed Snickers to be extracted from the carpet, and, ideally, lonely toy parts to be reunited with each other.

"The black knight goes with this toy and the jet plane goes with that one," said the founder of MotherhoodLater.com, Robin Gorman Newman. "Why am I, miraculously, the only one who knows what belongs where?"

Why? Because you're a mom, of course! Here's hoping that Mother's Day brings a maid to your door.

And it's not you.

Lenore Skenazy is a contributing editor at the New York Sun. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lenore@lenoretown.com), and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.