Frantically Cleaning

[catsittingstill]

I have family coming over.

My house is the way it is based on desultory cleaning most of the time, combined with periodic more thorough cleaning when something bothers me, combined with frantic cleaning when guests are about to come over. 

So I end up frantically cleaning about two or three times a year.  I don't just sweep the floors (desultory cleaning) I mop the floors and dry them on hands and knees with a towel because otherwise the local hard water leaves white spots.  I don't just put books on bookshelves, I dust bookshelves.  I don't just pile important papers on a desk or in a corner, I go through the piles of once-important papers, discarding the ones that aren't important anymore and filing (most of) the rest.  I have ambitions of washing the windows, but hesitate to go so far as to promise that this will actually, you know, *happen* this time.

I expect it is this that keeps me from having to saw whole rooms off the house when they get full.  But it feels like I'm cheating--trying to make it look like I keep house this way all the time.

However I need to keep in mind, as Peteralway pointed out "Frantic cleaning three times a year *is* normal."

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Peter is right; the tradition of frantic cleaning at least once a year goes back almost 6,000 years... maybe more, but I know the Jews have been doing it that long....

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Mine isn't really on a regular schedule :-)

[wetkneefarm.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear there are other desultory house-cleaners out there. I figure I'm doing well when I sweep the floor and move things off the sofa... I talk about mopping a lot, but it only happens every year or so. :-)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The kitchen floor gets mopped a little more often. Mopping the rest of the house...not so much. We have times when there's only room for one person to sit on the sofa; the rest is papers and books and stuff.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Gee, I don't remember saying that, but I certainly agree with myself.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It's okay; I remember it for you.

You said it when I was cleaning house for you and the Greatest Carpool Ever to stay at my place on the way to GaFilk...um...last year I think it was.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I feel witty
Oh so witty
I fill witty and spitty and...uh...

Oh, nevermind.

[mdlbear]

You sweep the floors?

We're doing well when we can stay on top of the dishes and the laundry, and do enough recycling so as not to create a tripping hazard for people walking from one end of the house to the other.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

We have wood floors in most of the house; sweeping is easier than vacuuming. And we have a no-shoes house (most of the time) so going barefoot means we notice the little hard things on the floor pretty quickly. It only takes about 25 minutes to sweep the whole house, which is considerably faster than vacuuming used to be.

And some of the things that I thought were flaws in the finish of the floors turn out to be water-soluble mess--but some of the things I thought were mess turned out to be flaws in the finish. Who the heck was dumb enough to varnish without first sweeping all the sawdust off the floor?

[artbeco.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. We reach, sister. :)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Hee. I've gotten a little better at cleaning... Putting stuff away is starting to seem a practical thing to do.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

http://www.bobs.com/Lyrics.cgi?Mopping_Mopping_Mopping