Company

We're having friends over tonight. We were going to have a bonfire, but the weather has conspired against us. Again. As it has all summer thus far. So instead of fun outdoors and a quick tidy of the house, we decided to have our friends come by anyway and cleaned the whole place (minus the bedroom). It looks great. Better than it's looked in quite a while.

You see, we're not terribly good at housekeeping. Never have been. We can live with clutter. We had a very small house before this one (which is not huge either). Somewhere, somehow, we became comfortable with a level of clutter that goes beyond odds and ends here and there. It extends to unwashed dishes sitting on the counter for a very long time, clumps of cat fur blowing down the hallway like tumbleweeds, and unfolded laundry occupying otherwise useful seating. All the time. The kids fight over who gets to sit in that chair because it's so seldom uncovered.

Unless we have company. Which we are having tonight. Our pastor and his wife, and another couple, who have done ministry worldwide. Both couples are friends of ours, and we're looking forward to their visit very much. We don't have friends over often. Mainly because the living room isn't big enough to have more than 2 people over without dragging a chair or two in from the kitchen. Which hasn't been done yet... Okay, taken care of.

And of course there's the clutter. Last minute entertaining has not really been something we've done, due to our house just never beeing in "company" shape.

So tying this into home schooling, I want the way the house is now to be the new status quo. Things picked up. Clutter not excused for weeks on end. Cat tubleweeds eradicated (at least every few days...these two shed like nobody's business). And I want the kids to help.

I grew up with a perfectionist mother, who I think might be a little OCD. We could never do a good enough job, so she never let us do much cleaning, unless she was using it as punishment of some sort. Even then sometimes she'd yell at us to just leave it and she'd do it herself. Go figure. So the whole concept of keeping a tidy house - personally keeping a tidy house, is a little foreign. Not that that's in any way a valid excuse. It's just out there. Fact. And something I don't want to burden our kids with.

So, check back in a month or so and we'll see how things are going. Our friends will be here in a few minutes, so I should make sure we have all of the last minute bits sorted.