Health Freak Mommy is 5 Years Old!

Today, as I was walking to Cassandra’s kindy to pick her up, I was trying to take stock of my life and then went on to have an ‘audit trail’ of what I am today.

Six years ago, I was a not-so-contented housewife with only 2 young toddlers. Life then with 2 toddlers who were not even in school yet was pretty monotonous. I had a live-in helper who was by far the best maid I’ve ever had, no blogs to update and no online store business to worry about. Can you imagine what a humdrum life was for me then? I am one who needs a little challenge and ‘good stress’ to add a dash of spice to my life. I spent most of my free time socializing in a reputable mom forum, a forum for Glenn Doman inspired parents and a few other forums for parents. I was an active member of these mom forums and made friends with a bunch of new mommies like me, who remain my good friends up until this day. From these forums, I clicked on links to blogs written by SAHMs. And from some of these blogs, I gathered that I could actually make money from blogging… in US Dollars that is! A light bulb moment struck exactly 5 years ago today! I was very excited. Being the impatient and ambitious me, I spent many late nights on my ‘project’ and the rest is history.  My maiden Health Freak Mommy blog (blogspot) was conceived in April 2007.  A few months later, I bought a domain and healthfreakmommy.com was created.  HealthFreakMommy.com now has over 37,000 visits a month (with over 15,000 unique visitors a month) (statistics for January 2012).  This excludes visitors to my blogspot blog.

Today, I am a writer of 3 blogs and I also churn money from my blogs and am a small-time entrepreneur. I cannot imagine my life without the internet. I guess I would be a full-time housewife without a live-in helper who spends all my time doing household chores, cooking, fetching the kids everywhere and coaching them in their school work. I wonder if I will like this kind of lifestyle. Our current live-in helper will leave us very soon. My time on the computer will be limited and that’s for sure. Half of my time will be spent on house work and the kids. Honestly, I am looking forward to see how our ‘new chapter in life’ will fall into place without our current helper. Our current helper has been giving us a good amount of stress. On the other hand, I am also worried that my life will be upside down and more stressful without a live-in helper. Come what may, I shall face each day as it comes and shall not worry unnecessary.  Worrying is like a rocking chair — it gives you something to do but will not bring you anywhere!

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Do You Deduct Your Maid’s Salary For Damages Done?

For those of you who employs a maid, whether part-time or live-in maids, do you make the maid  pay for damages that she had done to your property and belongings?  I have been having live-in maids for almost 10 years and I have never deducted my maids’ salary for damages that they had done whether to our clothes or other belongings.  Lately, our live-in maid has been damaging our things quite a bit. Apart from the occasional bowl, cup and pot breakages, burnt food, she also burnt our clothes while sleep-ironing. Yep, this maid has a habit of dozing off while ironing our clothes or even washing shoes in the bathroom (though we have been telling her umpteen times that she does NOT need to iron the adult clothes – my hubs will send them to the laundry. My mil irons her own clothes)!  But we have never once deducted damages done from her salary, albeit we did threaten to deduct (but darn, we still don’t have the heart to do so!).

Yesterday while she was cleaning the windows and mosquito nettings, she pushed one of the panes of the netting off the frame and it fell 5 stories down!  Suffice to say, the mozzie netting was mangled!  That replacement pane of mozzie netting would cost us a few hundred Ringgit.  It would not be fair for us to bear the cost. Just like she burnt Alycia’s new hand-made dress that I ordered from my friend.  It was brand new and never worn and she burnt it with the iron and tried to keep quiet about it! I found out when I took the dress out for Alycia to wear and saw the damage at the bottom of the dress.  But I did not deduct the cost of the dress from her salary.  I feel that it is really not fair that she keeps damaging things, happily knowing that we will not have the heart to deduct the damage from her salary.

Do you deduct damages that your maid had done to your belongings from her salary?  Let’s discuss!

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HEALTH FREAK MOMMY