make my house presentable enough for unexpected guests

The main areas of the house are presentable again. My mother bought me an excellent lightweight DirtDevil vaccuum she found at a thrift store. It sucks up everything but the trade off, which I’m quite willing to put up with, is that it’s extremely loud. Sounds like you really have a dirt devil working inside the tiny dust compartment, going nuts for you.

I’m also in the process of throwing away extraneous papers. Amazing how obsolete things get when you leave them for a year and gain perspective.

It’s been a while since I’ve visited this goal, and it’ll be a while before I entertain in the house. But this is still an important goal. My focus here will be to completely clean and declutter the house from January to April, the first quarter of the new year. Because when I am put on bedrest, I won’t be able to clean at all, and I want to make things as simple as possible for my husband and anyone else who may be helping out.

I cleaned the kitchen completely, again. Sigh. I absolutely love a clean kitchen, but it always seems to get dirty so quickly and it takes me a great amount of time to talk myself into cleaning it.

Next week, I’m scheduling another couple of hours to cleaning it. I still have to do the bathroom today. And am currently decluttering the closet.

It’s odd but since I posted this goal, I seem to be entertaining guests several times a month, so there is a necessity to keep it moderately presentable.

I vaccuumed and rearranged the furniture today. I want to make it comfortable and inviting, a beautiful place to be. Which means that slowly I’d like to switch out a few ratty, old things and put in some new ones. A rough list:

1. new sleep pillows
2. pretty reading lamp
3. short bookcase
4. night stand
5. radio/cd player
6. plants
7. new mattress sheets
8. quilt

I didn’t do anything major with it. Cleaned off my desk and polished it. Cleaned the windows and dusty ledges, vaccuumed. Rearranged a few things. But on the whole, it looks and feels so much fresher, AND roomier. There are some things I have not done yet, like displaying our framed photos, going through the magazine piles, and the stack of receipts and paperwork. But these aren’t necessary for this goal.

Today I’ll be starting with the guest room. I really want to get a few pieces of furniture for it, like a night stand, cute lamp, etc. It’s currently our dumping ground for excess stuff right now.

I made a lot of progress towards this goal today. Spent the entire day cleaning up the bathroom and the entire kitchen and all the floors. I also sorted out things to file and threw out a whole bunch of junk mail. Also did four loads of laundry and made a fresh bed with them and covered the couch with fresh covers.

Tomorrow I’m going to tackle the living room and either the guestroom or the bedroom. I felt so good about the clean-ness.

Kitchen looks wonderful again. Cleaned everything yesteryday. Countertops, sink, floors. I love the feeling of clean. Everything just seems to feel more organized, peaceful, and well-run.

I’m going to aim at doing the living room today.

I have no choice here—guests will definitely be coming, since I’ll be hosting Christmas dinner this year. It may actually turn out to be a lunch since I have elder relatives who aren’t comfortable driving at night. We may eat out in the patio.

After the trip to Oregon, house was a mess again. But I got the kitchen cleaned the day after we returned. Floors too and all countertops. Today I’m doing the most important room in the house, the bathroom.

I’m doing a good job on this goal. When my friend came over yesterday, she said, “You didn’t have to clean up for me!” I said I didn’t. In fact, I’ve been maintaining the house every day, so that to get ready for her arrival, all I had to do was a little light cleaning here and there. I wasn’t scrambling the way I always do. So much better….

But this goal isn’t done, because my husband got a whole bunch of new books and other stuff, and we need to organize them.