Should A Family Visit Equal Spring Cleaning ?

The wonderful anticipation underscored by bouts of cleaning...

Each time I make a promise to myself to keep the house tidy and clean...even just for us ! Famous last words. As usual we are only galvanized into action when we know that family is coming to stay. Not just for a meal, but for a length of time. Time to ( maybe ) have a closer look at various dust friendly, cob - webbed corners.

Oh I know that only a few visitors do take the time to look for flaws in our cleaning ability. Luckily, most visitors are just plain happy to see us and everything else is meaningless. Yet, what is it that makes us turn ( for a short time ) into clean freaks the moment we know that others are coming to stay ?

Just now a horrid thought crossed my mind. Am I ( are we ) an aberration when it comes to cleaning ? Is everyone else up to date with all that jazz ? Take us now. We've know way in advance that on such and such a day, it needs to shine...but for some unknown reason ( laziness perhaps ) we've left it to the last minute.

We still have a few hours of grace and we aim to use them to our maximum ability ! Stupid when you think about it. Gosh, in the middle of last night, I heard myself shouting at poor Bob : " Don't use this toilet. I have just cleaned it !" As you can imagine, that went over very well. " This is my toilet too and I will use it whenever I want."

Maybe I have gone a bit too far in this current bout of cleaning . But then again, men usually don't have to clean in and around ( men, why can't you aim better ? ) a toilet !!! Oh yes, spring cleaning can test your patience.

Yesterday Bob and I cleaned, rearranged and tidied up to such an extent, that both of us were almost speechless with joy. All of a sudden the chips of complacency dropped from our eyes and we had a new appreciation for our home. Bob even put on his tool belt and was drilling and putting up pictures and shelves. Wow.

" Can you believe how nice our home looks ? " or " Why didn't we do this earlier ? " or " Let's pinky swear to keep it like that all the time !" Of course this last one is rather questionable and in a way I am glad. A house needs to be lived in and it's fine to have non-perfection. At least I prefer it. As long as the first impression from our visitors is good, that is all that counts...

Yeah, now for the good stuff. We are so excited to have our family come to stay. On the off chance that family of ours are also reading this, don't worry, we gladly will undertake bouts of spring cleaning so that we can get to spend time with you.

Biggi