Irma was coming to scrub our floors, vacuum our stairs and do the linen laundry again. It was that time of the week when I could rest assured that I’d be coming home to a house that smelled like freshness, not stale dog hair and leftover pizza. No, I’m not bragging. In fact, it took a life coach and a mentor of mine to help me realize that my life had become full of such important things, that if I didn’t have a housekeeper, I might be sacrificing succeeding at lots of them. Things like other people’s salaries, half million dollar contracts, commercial real estate insurance and all of the lovely stuff that comes with running a startup.

I had a business to buckle down and care about. So anxiety over dust gathering on my bedside table or the fact that I may be a bad wife since I hadn’t done the laundry in 4 weeks, was becoming a waste of my mind space and energy.

So there. I’m over the guilt of the housekeeper, phew it feels good.

But now there’s this funny little thing that I noticed about Irma. When my husband leaves his clothes in the laundry (another thing that came from the life coach — make him do his own laundry!), good ol’ Irma folds them in perfect tiny squares and sometimes even takes them upstairs to the proper drawers. I used to cringe at this, thinking, “I know he’s doing this on purpose to take advantage of the complimentary folding and organizing”. But no sooner did I get over that when I accidentally left my own clean laundry in the dryer.

Irma came, and my clothes were left on top of the dryer in a bin, unfolded. “Huh”, I thought — “She must have been in a hurry”.

Then low and behold, a few weeks later, the same thing happened. My recently cleaned clothes were left unfolded in a bin, in the bedroom. She found them in the dryer, and this time, carted them upstairs.

So I did an experiment for the few weeks that followed.

I left my husbands clothes in the dryer one week, and mine the next. Repeated a few times more, just for reporting accuracy. Guess what I learned? That my housekeeper certainly has a gender bias toward working women. Right about now you’re probably thinking that I’m not very nice to her, and that she just doesn’t like me. In fact, I sincerely adore Irma. I’ll leave little notes for her telling her how happy I am that she helps me so much. Each month there is a significant tip in her check, that I write out myself. Whenever I’m home, working of course, and she is there — I sit and talk with her about her niece, son..whatever the newest topic is. And not in a Beverly Housewives sort of way where I do all the talking. In a truly interested, happy to have her in my life sort of way (yes, I am always this corny).

Could it be the age old concept us ladies suffer from, that we have to do and have it all? Or the traditional expectation that women are responsible for the housekeeping, cooking, laundry and all of the other little pleasures that make a quality and clean lifestyle?

Research shows us that gender bias is real in the workplace. We hear often about how we should Lean In and prove our equality as women. Then there’s the all important discussion of developing nations and inequality in schools and societies that form suffering women the world. But who really cares about my housekeepers’ biases?

I’m not sure anyone does. What I do know is that I’m going to try my best to fold my own laundry, but if it happens again, I intend on telling Irma that my clothes shall be treated just like my husband’s.