You have guests coming with little notice – say, half a day’s heads-up.
Will your house be clean enough (by your standards) to receive guests without half a day’ worth of cleaning? Or is there clutter everywhere and you don’t care if guests see it as it’s your house to live in and enjoy as you want? Or is it too dirty / cluttered for guests?
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Personally I like a clean house but I find cleaning (especially de-cluttering) to be absolutely soul-destroying so it’s a constant mental battle between letting the table and counters get cluttered and keeping everything scrubbed and polished. Overall though the house is pretty clean: I have a (probably irrational) worry that my house has an “off” odor to it that I can’t sense so the bathrooms get scrubbed a couple times a week, the cat’s litter box gets scooped 3 times a day and gets a full clean-out, soap scrub, and litter replacement twice a week, and dishes are not allowed to sit in the sink at all. Laundry, especially towels and bedding, is done promptly and not allowed to accumulate for more than a couple of days. If there’s no clutter to address actually scrubbing counters, floors, cabinets, walls, and etc. is very satisfying. Trader Joe’s has a multi-surface spray cleaner called “Next to Godliness” that is absolutely outstanding. I love it. My wife however doesn’t like the smell so we tend to use Pine-Sol, Clorox bleach spray, vinegar and lemon juice, and lots of elbow grease.
We used to be… not hoarders, exactly, but close to it at least at first glance. We lived in a succession of very small houses and had little storage for stuff and going through things and trying to organize them was, as I noted, absolute drudgery. So things tended to pile up. We seemed to have turned a corner and our home is now quite presentable. Part of that comes from being in a bigger home with significant storage, part of that comes from having an epiphany that “things” don’t bring me enjoyment so having boxes of random junk actually cause more anxiety than going through them and tossing them out does, and part of that comes from witnessing shitty living conditions and having no desire to inadvertently emulate them. If I knew guests were going to show up in half a day’s time I would open the windows a bit to air the house out some while I scrubbed the bathrooms, empty and scrub the cat’s litter box, dust and vacuum, make sure all the garbage cans are emptied and deodorized, make sure all the towels in the bathrooms and kitchen are replaced with fresh ones, and… that’s about it. Then close up the house and light a scented candle or two. Probably an hour and half’s worth of work. I might ensure that I have a variety of beverages available and stream some BBC Radio 3 or the local NPR station, which also plays classical.
That’s if I had a bit of advance warning. If someone just showed up at the door unexpectedly I would be happy to welcome them in. Prepwork for guests is mostly about ensuring nothing off-smelling remains in the house (see below). There isn’t so much clutter or dust or dirt on the floor that I would be embarrassed by it but a little voice in the back my head would be trying to sow doubt hence the bit of cleaning if I actually have some forewarning.
Because I have two calorie-gobbling teenagers in the house we usually have large meals so there’s usually enough supper for a couple of extra people, as well.
My wife’s parents and her sister and BIL are all hoarders. If we drop by unannounced there’s often no place to sit down without moving piles of junk from one spot to the next. Those situations make me very uncomfortable for reasons that I can’t really identify. I also have a friend that has 4 (or 5, I can’t remember) dogs living in their rather small house and they are not potty trained. There are 10 – yes, 10 – people living in that house and whenever I bump into one of them in the wild they absolutely reek of ammonia and urine and dog shit. The stink is almost visible emanating from their clothes. Needless to say I have not gone to her house in at least 2 years, largely because of the smell and the mess. And they don’t notice it, at all. I can’t even wrap my head around that. (And because I’m sure someone will say something I will confirm that yes, the state is not only aware but has physically visited and inspected the house, the results of which I do not know although nothing has changed, and no, there is no meth lab there – it’s all from being too lazy to properly train their dogs.) So I tend to go the other way and try to ensure that anything that can give off an unpleasant odor is addressed immediately. That coupled with the really uncomfortable feeling I have when visiting my in-laws and their piles and piles and piles of junk I think has pushed me to keep my house quite presentable.