It’s not that I’m too lazy to clean my house. It’s that I’m married to a man who thinks hanging up a pair of pants is a home improvement project best left to the experts. And when he salts his food, he doesn’t even aim for the plate; he just holds the shaker over his head and salts the entire kitchen table. (Because you never know, he may want to eat that too!)

The last time I hired someone to clean my house, I went with a girlfriend’s recommendation. “Bobbi isn’t much to look at,” she said. “But she does a decent job on the housework.”

Little did I know that nestled in that statement like Jack Spratt and his thyroid-challenged wife were both the biggest understatement and biggest overstatement ever uttered by womankind.

When Bobbi got out of her car and approached our house wearing an ear-to-ear grin, my dog, Sean, burst through the back door and ran at her, screaming, “Get ye to a dentist, woman!” Bobbi’s teeth — all both of them — were sticking straight out of her gums as though they were pointing at me, and, God bless her, she was not going to stop smiling any time soon.

The more Sean barked and growled (and lunged at Bobbi’s face), the more she smiled and told him it would be OK. And the more she smiled and told him it would be OK, the more I knew that it wouldn’t. Sean would never embrace Bobbi and her wacky chompers, even if she proved to be the second coming of clean ... which she didn’t.

It only took an hour to discover that Bobbi would not be winning any housekeeping pageants either.

Rather than eliminating the dust, Bobbi gently urged it to relocate. And, of course, the dust was all, “Hey, no thanks, we’ve got this house, the kids are still in school, the wife has her mah-jongg league. Maybe next year.” Not to mention the fact that her mop was carrying an AARP card and a cane.

A year later I regained my nerve and contacted a woman named Alexa. “I will make your house sparkle,” her ad said. Sparkle? Hell, I’ll settle for, “I will make your house not smell.” So, when I called to inquire about her rates, she said (with vaguely hookerish undertones), “Don’t worry, doll. I’m very fair.”

Attempting to give her directions to my house, I asked if she was familiar with my neighborhood. She said she was. Thirty minutes after she was scheduled to arrive, however, she called to tell me she’d “looked everywhere” for my house but couldn’t find it. I asked her if she’d looked on my street at all. No, she said, she couldn’t find that either. When I offered to provide an alternate route, she barked, “Well I’m home now … you want me to come all the way back!?”

Well when you put it that way, no. Not so much.

Which brings us to Shelly. Shelly who shows up on time every week. With all of her teeth, and a fresh disposable mop that dispenses a cool liquid sheen onto my hardwood floors. Shelly who calls if she’s going to be late. Shelly who leaves me little voicemail messages to “keep me abreast of the cleaning products she’s introducing in my home.”

Long live Shelly.

When she showed up at my house for the first time, Sean was naturally a little suspicious, still reeling from the Bobbi debacle. But I was so excited I had to physically restrain myself from jumping up and humping her leg.

And then she cleaned. And sang little songs along with her iPod and cleaned some more. “I’m going to mop my way out now,” she called up the stairs after an afternoon of scrubbing. “Same time next week OK?”

Knock me over with a feather duster. Same time next week will be fine.