It's the worst part of any party: the cleaning. Not after. Before.
Dusting
The
bookshelf looks fine until the fatal move - you pick up a toy to put away and
there, in black and white, evidence that you haven't dusted since that in-law
scare in mid-August. It isn't the dust that's apparent; it's the absence of
dust in this one hot wheel-car-sized space. You wonder what kind of time warp
exists wherein the toy isn't dusty, but the cabinet is. Doomed by 99 cents.
Vacuuming
Proudly,
you do happen to vacuum more than you dust. Sadly, it's never the furniture.
There is one arm of one loveseat that is the lair of your fattest cat. When you
prop up a throw pillow (repurposed from its use as a nearby fort) you see that
there is a wave, wave, of cat hair
forming on the arm. It's been balled up, undoubtedly, by the elbow of your
oldest sweatshirt during a Y&R lunch break. You can pick up the small cat-like roll in its
entirety, there's heft, mass to it. Lucky break, you think.
Clutter
Everybody
has clutter. But your clutter is world class. There are the kids' birth
certificates in a Ziploc bag since Canada 2011. There's a skeleton that was
never constructed, a pile of bones in a plastic dome. There are flyers on your
fridge of all kinds of cool stuff, long over, that you never went to. You
execute The Dump - everything in a laundry basket to be excavated at a later
date.
Bedroom
Somehow
you designed your house without hallways. Your bedroom is in view of the living
room and the dining room. More than
once you've been having polite chit chat over a cheese and cracker spread to
look up and notice your black bra is hanging suggestively out of a dresser
drawer. You haven't worn it since at least before you last dusted. Worse, you
see your granny size panties (your secret to no panty lines in dress pants...
and your secret for no use of the black bra) are on the floor. At first
glance others must think it's a Frisbee. At second glance they
think, man almighty.
Litter Box
It's in
the basement but it seems to permeate the entire house. Solution: make bacon on
the day of the party. Reminds everyone of grandma's house, also disguises what
Tidy Cat can't.
Kitchen Table
You see
nothing wrong with eating a four-course (joking of course, you never do less
than 5) meal on plates pushed slowly into the midst of a lego explosion. A
butter dish balanced on a beam of glow bracelets. A pot roast warming the toes
of a Webkinz bear. But since you'd like to serve more than 2 muddy children and
a windblown man in torn blue jeans at the table, you need more room. You emit
the most feared words of Lego Lovers everywhere: Time to Clean The Table.
Everyone knows that a put away Lego is as good as rubble.
~
In the
end, it took longer to clean the house than it did to host the party. But your
guests have been made feel welcome by the dust-free bookshelf, undergarment-free
bedroom and toy-free table. What more could they ask for?
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