Frantically Cleaning
Jun. 8th, 2009 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI 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."
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."
no subject
Date: 2009-06-08 11:16 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 02:19 am (UTC)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?