photo credit: Calc-tufa

Yesterday I got a call from a close friend who said she and her family were going to be passing through our area on their way to Las Vegas and they wanted to stop by. I love my friend but my house was a mess and wasn’t intending on getting it organized for a couple of days. I had clothes in the living room because I was ironing and my kitchen was a mess from breakfast. She said they were about 45 miles away which gave me only about an hour to work some magic. Here are some ways you can bluff your way to organized.

• Put all of the dirty dishes either in the dishwasher – don’t rinse or organize, just put them in OR
• My personal favorite is to hide them in the oven. This one can back fire on you if you are not careful and don’t take them out before you turn on the oven.
• All laundry can be hidden either in a non-guest bathroom, spare closet or laundry room as long as you can close the door.  The same goes for “stuff”.  Put everything in a box and hide it away.
• Vacuum only the areas your guests will see.  It’s a lot quicker to just vacuum the living room than worrying about doing the whole house.
• The bathrooms and kitchen always seem need the most attention so I keep a bottle of bleach and water around to spray on rags and wipe everything down (I don’t use products with ammonia in them because it can cause illness in some dogs and cats and we have dogs).  Even if it isn’t perfectly clean, it will smell clean.
• Lint roller is the next item to come out because my dogs do get on the couch so I don’t want my guests to leave all furry.  I lint roll the couch as quickly as I can.
• Yesterday we had an abundance of stuff from the holidays sitting around so all of it went in a big plastic tub and out in the garage.
• All of the doors in the house to rooms we are embarrassed to let anyone see get closed.
• I light a couple of vanilla scented candles and wait for the doorbell to ring.

Remember, your friends and family come over to see you not to inspect your house.  Clean up as much as you can then relax and enjoy the company.

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