This triggered distant memories of five-year-old me sitting in front of a fireplace at a random stranger’s house, sipping hot chocolate in rural Michigan after my mom slid off the road in the snow and skillfully steered the family sedan between the tree and the outhouse, then we walked to the farmhouse to use the phone.
Yes, that was definitely a thing.
If you’re dropping in on me when I’m doing stuff: Good!
You just volunteered!
Pick up a rag and do those radiators!
Iron those curtains!
You don’t get to be intimate enough to just drop by and not intimate enough to do some work. There is no overlap between those two.
I don’t “normally” do any of that specifically. But yeah, I could take a break for 20 minutes or so.
And it was quiet out there. I’d have the windows open, and you could hear the cars coming for a couple miles. slowly building up… woooooooooossssssshhhhhh getting louder, then receding for as long hhhhhssssssoooooow. But every so often, you’d hear wooooosh HONK SCREETCH then five minutes later knock knock “can we use your phone?”
I do see your point. And accept it to some degree. OTOH …
You (whoever) are actually hoping to create the false impression you are not home. Which, if successful, makes your deliberate non-opening socially blameless. But achieves that blamelessness solely by way of deception. The person I quoted originally telling the story said they got caught in the lie when their visitor peeked in the mail slot. Which greatly amplified the social cost of their failed deception. My view is one should accept the entire social cost of their preferences rather than trying to sweep them under a convenient nearby rug.
Admittedly, just like more and more people refuse to answer unexpected phone calls even from known persons, we are slowly and unevenly becoming a society that prefers only pre-arranged social interactions. The problems of course come in where the two parties to the transaction have differing attitudes / expectations about the situation they’re sharing. And at least in the OP’s case, apparently made doubly worse by the visitor’s “my way’s the only way” attitude to, well, every social interaction.
Heck, I find myself wanting to text people to ask permission to set up a time for even a brief phone call. Which would have sounded insane 25 years ago but is IME/IMO pretty mainstream now.
What will we collectively do once we collectively decide receiving an unsolicited text is also outré and we need a different channel to ask for permission to text to ask for permission to call to ask for permission to visit? I think we’re going in that direction and I’m not 100% for or against it. Just observing it wryly. 
In my personal case I’m increasingly hard of hearing. Mere tap, tap, tap at my front door will honestly go unnoticed. As do door knocks, phone calls, and texts while I’m in the shower or napping. Those are honest failures to connect despite our proximity.
I like this formulation. With great power comes great responsibility.
As to folks with parents or in-laws near by …
Ouch. That is a camel that will not stay out of your tent.
When 20+ years ago we moved my wife’s aging mother from several states away into our city, my wife was adamant: you can put Mom closer than 5 miles to you, but if you do, I’m moving out to keep her at least 5 miles from me. My wife and I were inseparable soulmates. She wasn’t kidding about leaving me to avoid uncontrollable proximity to her Mom.
The problem isn’t so much the proximity as the uncontrollability.
If I don’t answer the door, it’s not because I’m trying to create the impression that I’m not home. I’m trying to create the impression that I don’t want to answer the fucking door.
We convinced our son and daughter in law to move very close to us (7 miles, from over 90 miles) with the express promise that we’d never pop in. We drive by frequently, but always call (actually text) before we visit.
I forgot about napping. Yeah, that would be a problem with unannounced visitors. In theory, I’d be happy to have a friend stop by, but it has never happened in the 20+ years I’ve lived in my current home. My wife, on the other hand, wants at least 48 hours notice (I’m not exagerating)
Yeah, if you’re doing the comedian thing, where everyone is crawling on the floor right in front of the windows so they can’t be seen, you’re trying to give the impression you aren’t home. Otherwise , you’re just not answering the door. Am I pretending I’m not home/don’t have my phone if I don’t answer the phone?
Depends on the family. I’m currently in a condo and my surviving parents have a unit in the next building over - it’s about a five minute walk. We’re quite friendly, but I moved into this place less to be close to them (though it is handy at times if someone is ill) and more because it was very convenient for work, has a very nice water view, backs onto park land and is pretty and well-maintained as condo complexes go. They never just drop by and would be slightly miffed if I did the same. In fact we probably visit on average about once a month, almost always at their place because my step-mother is allergic to cats.
Mine is a friendly family with zero internal discord but, as I’ve come to find out, oddly independent and detached compared to most. We’ll socialize on some major holidays as a (partial, it’s rare everyone makes any given event) group, but never stuff like birthdays and whatnot.
Clearly that’s a matter of opinion, and between various eras, upbringings, and personalities that answer may vary wildly.
My individual view is that I am socially obligated to respond timely to all attempts to contact me of which I am aware. The medium of attempted contact is immaterial. At least for attempts coming from friends, family, and before I retired, from work. That does not extend to commercial calls from known callers, nor to unknown callers.
But I admit my view is a) rather old-fashioned now, b) rather extreme, and c) is highly conditioned by having spent most of my life in an always-on-call job and/or caring for increasingly unhealthy family members.
I would prefer it if everyone else held this same attitude although I recognize far short of everyone else does so.
Having said that, my obligation to respond to attempted contact does not imply any obligation to actually socialize for more than the few seconds necessary to establish who wants what from whom when and why.
You sound stressed and in need of someone to talk to. I’ll be right over. What’s your address again?
…and, what’s for lunch?
YES
nothing cowardly or dishonest whatsoever. thank you!
It’s not just cell phones that’s the difference. Back in the 1960s and early 70s when I was growing up, I don’t think any of my friends that I knew well enough to drop in on had a working mother. The dads went to work, and the moms stayed home, raised the kids, and kept the house presentable. As a result, everyone’s living room was pretty much always ready for company, at least in terms of how it looked.
Needless to say, now that it’s the norm for women to have their own jobs and careers, that’s no longer the case. So yeah, prospective visitors should pull that phone out of their pocket and ask if it’s a good time to drop by. And take ‘no’ for an answer, including if the phone doesn’t get answered.
If I were in the OP’s position, I’d be really afraid of losing my momentum. You take a break for 20 minutes, and that gives your body a chance to let you know it’s tired. And you look at all that stuff you were in the middle of plowing your way through 20 minutes ago, and you try to get back into it, but the energy’s not there, and you’re getting about 1/3 as much done per unit of time as you were before. Nightfall arrives, the house is still in the middle of its upheaval, and you have to go to bed while things are still a mess and you still have a pile of work to finish up the next day.
This is why I’d never want to live in the country. It does seem creepy and scary to me. No one can hear you scream! 
This is why I don’t automatically answer every phone call. I was on call-out for years. Every call-out meant a problem that was unexpected and a potential can of worms. I eventually transferred to another position, and it wasn’t until the phone rang at home after the transfer that I had the revelation that I wasn’t immediately tightening up into a total ball of stress. I felt so relaxed! It was wonderful. But I still don’t automatically answer the phone. My time is my time.
This, precisely.
Ol’ Granny used to say:
3 knocks it’s friendly. 5 knocks it’s bad news.
True. Miss Manners Pro Tip for dealing with the rudeness of inconsiderate dropper-inners without appearing rude or “inhospitable” oneself: Keep foregrounding how sad it is that you’re just completely unavailable right now, how you wish you had known they were thinking of coming by, why oh why didn’t they let you know in advance?
And never offer any specific reason for your complete unavailability, because that just gives the inconsiderate person something to try to argue with.
The goal, Miss Manners-wise, is this sort of outcome:
(knock knock) “Yoo-hoo! Ambush Victim, are you there? Guess who’s here!”
[Ambush Victim, opening door:] “Why hello there Doorway Mugger, how lovely to see you! Oh dear, I wish I could ask you to come in, but it’s the worst possible time, just my luck! Oh, I wish I had known you were coming by! I’m so sorry, but you make sure to get in touch soon and we’ll plan a visit for a time that works, all right? Whoops, there’s my timer again, you have a good trip—”
“Wait, why can’t we come in, what’s going on, we came all the way over here to see you!”
“Oh I know, I feel terrible I didn’t know about it so I could try to change the plans, but let’s absolutely get together soon and you can hear the whole saga!” [Narrator: “Ambush Victim is aware that when they do get together Doorway Mugger will have forgotten this remark, so she won’t have to make up a saga.”]
“But the kids are getting hungry and they need to use the bathroom!”
“Oh no, golly, Murphy’s Law in action, isn’t it? Let’s see, what to do… the only thing I can think of is the McDonalds a couple of miles from here, it’s a pretty lousy substitute for getting to visit with you but at least it’ll handle the kid emergency! Well, I’d better be letting you go and I’ll get back to this disaster, thank you so much for thinking of me and make sure to let me know in advance next time, I’d really love to see you and the kids!” (click)
No “go away”, no explicit reason for unavailability, no confronting Doorway Mugger about the rudeness of her expecting her unannounced visit to take priority over Ambush Victim’s activities. Just warm welcome and sympathy combined with absolutely unyielding unavailability for this unannounced visit.
Yes, yes, I know, you’re all muttering “smarmy and insincere” and insisting that Ambush Victim is fully entitled to explicitly reject Doorway Mugger’s rude intrusion, without pretending to be all sorry about it. Trust me, this way’s better.
I am kinda amazed by all the misanthropes and introverts here and in the seat mate thread.
I guess many of the posters here really don’t like people or is it they don’t like being sociable?
Sure on a really long flight I would like to nap and read a book- but I also would like some interesting conversation.
If the door knocker is a friend, I would welcome them- offer them the bathroom and some beverages and even snack- even if I had stuff to do. I might not ask them to stay- or I might.
Actually, old-fashioned is very much what it isn’t. Traditional etiquette has always recognized the status of “not at home to callers”, whether strangers or intimates, whether by phone or in person, even if one is physically at home with phone access.
It’s in many ways generous and admirable to make an ironclad rule for yourself that you will always respond as soon as you can to any attempt by your friends/family/coworkers to contact you unannounced. But it has never been “socially obligated” as far as etiquette is concerned.
Etiquette-wise, you’re allowed to stay private in your private space when unannounced callers come calling, and you’re allowed to simply pretend you’re not there in order to avoid the rudeness of explicitly rejecting the unannounced callers.
Which is fine, you do you! The point is that nobody is socially obligated, etiquette-wise, to participate in unsolicited socializing if they don’t want to.
It’s not rude to avoid unsolicited socializing, either by laying low if possible or declining with expressed regret, as long as the person who offered the unsolicited socializing isn’t being put down or scolded for it. There’s no need to diss or scold people as “misanthropes” just because they happen to have less tolerance for unsolicited socializing attempts than you do.