I spoke to a woman once who was exhausted from cleaning her house because she was about to go on a vacation.
If you aren’t personally a slob, I’ll just explain that to a slob this makes absolutely no sense. We only clean when someone is going to see the house. Going on vacation means that the house will be locked up for a while and there’s no reason to clean. Besides, I always spend the day before a vacation digging through piles of stuff to find what I need to pack, doing last minute loads of laundry in order to have enough clean undies to last the trip.
I do know that there are reasons to clean before a trip. What if a pipe burst and your house flooded and neighbors noticed the water coming out of your windows and rushed inside your house to turn off the water, and tripped over clutter and drowned? What if you had a wreck and someone had to go inside your house to get your pajamas to bring to you in the hospital? And really, it would be nice to have the neighbor kid come check on the dog instead of driving an hour out of the way to drop her at grandma’s. Yes, there are reasons to clean. But being all “ifs” they just aren’t enough for me.
However, I will say that it was nice to come home to a clean kitchen today. We were only gone one night, and something does smell somewhere, but the main three rooms of the house look great. We actually are having a group in our home tonight, and I’m sitting here writing instead of running around frantically shoving things into drawers and cabinets. If I can figure out what that smell is, we’ll be in great shape!
I’m still not sure that I would do a deep cleaning before a trip, but it’s nice to come home and not have to wonder whether or not your house was broken into and ransacked.
Anonymous says
It's me again, Anonymous. This post made me laugh out loud. "If I can figure out what that smell is, we'll be in great shape!" hehehehe! I, too, have fears that someone will have to go into my house, specifically one of the bedrooms, unexpectedly. Once a family from our church went out of town for a sporting competition. While there they found they needed the children's birth certificates in order to compete. The mom called me and asked if I would find someone from the church to go to their house and get them and fax them. I was in awe. She even told me exactly where they could be found in the filing cabinet. If that had been me my kids just couldn't have competed. Sobering.
Anonymous says
Before vacation used to be the only time we cleaned, because we always had house sitters for our dog. My husband used to wistfully say after three days of exhausting stuffing bags in hidden nooks and crannies, while looking at our clean-for-us-but-still-messy-by-most-folks-standards house: We should do this sometime for us.
Heather says
I have been guilty of putting dirty dishes in the oven to hide them during panic mode cleans. Granted, I haven’t done this for a long time- but it isn’t outside the scope of my brand of slob-ness. I hope you really meant it when you said you liked posts on your older blogs. You’re inspiring me. I sat here in between reading your posts to start a new list entitled “EVERYTHING that will make my house clean”. Not that I have any aspirations of tackling it all anytime soon. I just want to have a master list to choose from when starting new non-negotiable tasks. I finally feel that someone understands. It’s not that I’m so dirty that I have sink pudding (it really is a thing. Google it if brave), or that you can’t tell what color my toilets are really meant to be. I’m just Messy with a capital M. I don’t pick things up. I don’t put away laundry. Dishes don’t get put in the dishwasher because there are clean ones there that I don’t want to put away. Mail collects in tiny piles everywhere that sooner or later turn into avalanche piles almost everywhere. I throw books I’m done with on the floor right in front of the stupid bookcase they came from when I grabbed them. I can’t reach the bookcase from bed, see. So it gets placed on the floor because I don’t pick it up in the morning. And then so does the next one. And the next. And then one morning I’m sliding on a pile of books that are 7 inches from their intended home. WHEW! Honesty is pretty powerful 🙂
Rebecca says
Dirty dishes also hide well in the tub!!!
Nony says
Haha! Love it!
Mandie says
I have also hidden dirties in the oven. But in the interest of complete disclosure, I actually learned to do that from reading ‘Sink Reflections’. It just hadn’t ever occured to me. I thought ‘Yes! That’s a GREAT idea!’ I’m pretty sure that’s not what FlyLady intended for me to learn from her book.
But my most shameful dirty dish secret is both sinks would be piled so high, it was easier to haul all the dirties to the-WAIT FOR IT-bath tub! Which, honestly, probably wasn’t that clean either. I haven’t had to do that in quite a long time, but I still remember those days without a dishwasher. Which was really just an excuse, because I know good and well having a dishwasher did not solve my dirty dish problems. It just made me feel worse, to be honest.
Dana, you are just so great. I love the pics you post! I sometimes think self-help, housekeeping-tip folks and I have a WILDLY different idea of what messy is. You and I? We have the EXACT same idea of what it is. I would feel just fine letting you into my home because you get it. 🙂 Thanks for all your hard work and honesty!
AnnieB says
“I’m still not sure that I would do a deep cleaning before a trip, but it’s nice to come home and not have to wonder whether or not your house was broken into and ransacked. ” Or worse, not know that your house was broken into and ransacked!
Deeann says
Our house was broken into once and I only noticed because our night stand mini tiffany lamp was gone when my husband went to turn it on…after walking through the house, which like yours is not filthy just very messy, with countless little piles on every available surface…
This burgler had gone through our house taking whatever struck her fancy then moving the piles a bit to hide the gaps! There were a couple places were we could see the outline in dust of the place something had been…
Fast forward 3 months, police called to say the woman had been found and asked if we wanted to come see if some of the things in her house were ours… Wow, that lady did a much nicer job of decorating with my things than I did. You could actually see everything, and it was CUTE. Almost everything in her house was ours. You see we had moved our ailing grandmothers home and our home both into a new house we bought so we could all live together and take care of her, many of our things moved into the storage shed in boxes… and four years later there is still sat.
We were able to get almost every thing back in cluding some Anne Geddes style pictures of my kids dressed up like flowers in pots that had been hanging on her wall- CREEPY I know, but really it was very had to be certain we had been robbed at first.
I till haven’t gotten every thing out of the shed and there are things in there I love, but there is no room in the house to be bringing more in… so I started at the beginning of your blog and I am going to start getting my act together… now that my kids are almost grown… sigh!
Nony says
Oh Deeann, what a story! You lived my biggest fear!
Jen says
I am one of the crazy people who cleans like crazy before going on a trip. It is very comforting to me to come home to a clean house with empty garbage cans and fresh sheets on the bed. I know that unpacking will make a huge mess so it gives me peace of mind to know that my clean shower and fresh bed will be waiting for me afterward and that my house won’t smell like rotting garbage can when I open the door.
When I go away and leave my husband at home he is left with a very detailed list of jobs that need to be done before I get home as he goes feral after a few days being alone. Top of the list is 1. Empty Garbage Cans. 2. Run Dishwasher. 3. Change Sheets. 4. Vacuum up dog hair. That is my bare minimum for happiness when I get home from a trip.
Nony says
“Bare minimum for happiness” I love that!
Kristy Deloach says
I totally understand “Bare minimum for happiness”. A place for everything everything in its place. The thought of having something happen while I am gone and someone needing to come into my house. Once we went out of town and we hired someone to watch our business and house. I knew this person he was a friend of my family. Yet, I spent weeks before my trip. Going through every closet, and drawer making sure everything was perfect. (you know people snoop when you aren’t looking lol).
Tori aka Farm Marm says
I once left for a “week or two vacation” that lasted three months..who knew you had to check the oil and the tires before a trip? Anyhoo, when my mil knew we were on our way home (moving Hunny back home from a job two states away) she went over and cleaned my house. She claimed it took them several HOURS to clean my house. I just always tell her, “well, I’m sorry you felt you had to clean my house. I never asked you too, nor did I want you to.”
Another time we left for a trip to Utah..we live in TN. While we were gone TN had an ice storm, trees fell down and our renters (they lived on our property in another house) couldn’t get out. They needed the keys to the tractor. Oh.MY.GOOD. GRACIOUS!!!! They had to climb through a window and go through my whole disaster of a house to get to the keys at the back door. I was mortified to say the least. The woman is an OCD type that deep cleans her fridge every week for shopping!
Marcia Cross says
My story is embarrassing. We had a break-in, and the policeman who came said, “Sorry, but I just have to ask…how much of this did the person who broke in do?” This policeman was someone we knew…which made it even worse.
Lexa says
My husband and I left on what was supposed to be a simple overnight trip 3 hours away (a work-related event) … and my husband fell down a 53′ waterfall and nearly died. He was hospitalized in another state for 10 days and unable to put any weight on his injured leg for several weeks, let alone climb the stairs at our townhouse, when he did come home. His parents and siblings drove 14 hours to see him at the hospital then together with a few friends, helped straighten up the house. I use the term “straighten” VERY loosely because it was a total mess, of course! And this was before kids – just my husband and I! We are both total slobs, and have since added three children, 2 cats and a dog to our family and moved to a larger home. In our case, larger home just means more room for mess, but we are working on it! I’m enjoying reading this blog and putting your hard-learned lessons into practice, Nony. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us!
Mary Stephens says
Regarding having a pipe break while you’re away from home: it can happen. A friend of mine said their neighbor called them while they were away once and told them there was water running out from under their door!!! ARG. Yes – new floors, etc. And, a pipe broke in our house before we moved in here and damaged some of the floors before my brother noticed what was going on. So, yes, that is a good reason to have your home at least marginally presentable when you go away. 😉 Not that it’s something that I enjoy doing, I think I tend to stress over it more than actually do it. Is that slob brain?
Teresa says
Dishes in the oven? Been there, done that. My personal favorite way to panic clean is shoving everything in the closet and then taking a drill and screwing it shut while I lean against it so that it will stay shut and no one opens it. (Yes, I’m serious. I’ve done it.) It worked out fine until I needed something out of the closet, only to realize that the drill was dead and all of the screw drivers as well as the charger were in the closet.
Teresa says
Btw, this is a comment on a comment.
Teresa says
Ah ha! Found the post and remembered what else I had wanted to say about it. The original post I was commenting about is by Heather.
On the subject of books, also been there done that…and worse. I already had a big pile by my bed to start with because I hadn’t put them away yet, so I figured it would be a good time to start cataloging and reorganizing my book shelves…yes, SHELVES. To say the least, I couldn’t find my bed and was sleeping on the living room floor for about a month…or so(????) until I was basically told that if they didn’t ALL get picked up by the end of the day, my dad was going to toss them all.
To say the least, they all got picked up, and were somewhat organized. Never did get the cataloging done though, and it’s been a number of years now.
Kristy K. James says
I miss living in town, where my apartment had enough storage so that coming home to a clean house happened more often than not. It didn’t matter if it was home from a weekend getaway…or just home from the grocery store…it was nice.
Fast forward five years in a house with no storage, including about three years recovery from a serious auto accident…and my house is still basically a storage facility. It’s not nice to come home to because there aren’t enough places to put things. And so much of it has to go…so it WILL be nice to come home to.
But I just have to comment on the ‘smell.’ When we were in town, the apartment looked great…but for days it smelled like someone threw up…and I could NOT find the source…anywhere. As I’m dusting the entertainment center, I notice that one of the kids managed to slide a cup behind the television, and as I pulled it out, it tipped over…spilling horribly curdled milk all over the floor. Found the source….and created a new rule on the spot. Anymore cups hidden behind the television would result in some dire consequences. ZERO computer time. 🙂
Dana White says
Oh no! Yes, milk is usually the culprit when it smells like throw-up!
Susan says
I took your advice and am reading your blog from the beginning and this is how far I have gotten. I am convinced that we may have been separated at birth! I have been taking time to read this in between working around the house. We homeschool and I neglect a lot through the school year. Now that we are in our first week of break and many of our friends are still in school I have taken the time to de-clutter and clean my house. I have to tell you that I do a major clean before we go on vacation. We always go the first week of August because Texas is unbearable then and the mountains help us to see the light at the end of the tunnel of heat which doesn’t usually come until Halloween or later. My daughter’s birthday is the week before we leave so I have to get my act together for that. She is at camp so it’s the perfect time to get to work. Since the house is clean for her birthday, I am able to tackle some de-cluttering projects during the interim week as well as get packed. I have to add that my neat freak mother in law stays at the house with the cat for the week we are gone. I have been married for 29 years and she has tried to help me most of that time. She has never understood my ways but loves me anyway. The bottom line is that when we come home it’s usually 1:00 a.m and it’s so nice to come in and not trip over anything. For unpacking I put all the luggage in the living room and work from there instead of everyone taking their own stuff and before you know it the stuff is in every room and strewn all over the house. Thank you so much for sharing your journey.
Jeanine says
When leaving for a trip I always schedule a day, or at least several hours for packing. But when I come home, I never schedule any time to UNPACK. I somehow just assume that it’ll get done by itself. So I seem to always have half unpacked suitcases sitting around.
Raven says
*sigh* We can’t go away without having a petsitter come over because we have a nervous cat who FREAKS OUT when we are out of the house overnight. So yes, every time we go on vacation we have to clean the house. It *does* make for a nice surprise when we return! I’m leaving for a week on Friday, the cleaning lady is coming today (a Tuesday) and I’m praying that we can keep the house relatively clean for the next two days while we frantically pack for baby’s first cruise. Thanks for the inspiration.
Samantha says
Ok, read this and immediately thought of the show “The Middle” where the Heck family goes on a mini vacation to some water park and their super perfect neighbor comes over to check their mail or something and sees in the windows and calls the police b/c someone has broken into their house and ransacked it. The Hecks come home, freaking out, and then discover that the house is actually just like they left it. LOL
I am a HUGE slob. I have 7 kids, homeschooled for many years and am just now discovering that I *have to* get with it and get organized before they all grow up thinking it’s normal to throw trash in the floor and not clean up after yourselves, panic when someone drops by, freak out when the grandparents call and say they are coming over, etc.
I will say I’ve discovered something ridiculous though: We go to a family church camp once a year for 10 days. We pack enough clothes to last 6 days and then go to the laundromat. The 8 of us (7 kids and me) sleep in one room that’s smaller than my master bedroom and have a tiny little bathroom with a tub, sink and toilet and barely enough room to turn around. All week long, we manage to keep that clean. Why? B/c I know that if I let ONE THING go in that room, we’ll be in chaos all week and there’s just no time between 2-3 daily church services, 3 meals in the cafeteria, fun and games in the afternoons and evenings after church etc. And you know what? It’s not even hard and i have time to study my Bible and pray and read books! LOL
Yet then I come home and can’t do it here. I’m going to do it this time. Step one starts tomorrow.
Laura says
I haven’t read all the comments yet, but HAD to add one! We left the house so horrible once Christmas break when we were staying with my parents, that when my husband ran home to pick up something, his first thought on seeing all the chaos really WAS that someone had broken in!