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Making It Look Like I Haven’t Cleaned

July 30, 2012 By Dana White | 22 Comments

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We all know I have issues, right?

Good.

On Friday . . . when I should have been basking in a kid-free morning while the kids were at my mom’s house, I was cleaning.

I’d been putting off any and all cleaning tasks all week under the assumption that I was going to start feeling better the next day.

Except that I felt worse each day than I had the day before.

And the house looked worse each day than it had the day before. 

When Friday arrived, I had no choice but to get to work.  My in-laws were scheduled to “drop by” to bring their dog here for us to watch while they went to a family reunion.  If the MIL is coming, you can’t put off cleaning any longer.

Sick or not.

I was extra-irritated with myself because I hate needing to spend two hours just to get ready for a Friday morning visit when no one is expecting perfection anyway.  I love it when my in-laws drop by and I’m grateful for the chance to pay back a little bit for all the times they’ve kept our dog while we go on vacation.

The stress over making the house look presentable?  I only have myself to blame for that. 

So I dragged my achy and miserable body around the house for two hours . . . picking up, dusting, vacuuming, and swishing out toilets.  Amazingly, the house looked pretty good after those two hours, with minimal master-bedroom shoving. (An impossibility pre-blog.)

But I still tried this old technique.  It’s a safety net I give myself.

Create a scene that shows I’m in the middle of a project.

I have my reasons. 

If someone walks in and sees this project in progress, they assume:

1.  That I didn’t do any special cleaning for their Friday morning drop by visit.

2.  That if I didn’t do any special cleaning, this must be what my house looks like at any random moment in time.

3.  That a missed Nerf dart or dirty sock or dust ball is totally understandable in a house that looks this decent on a day when, obviously, no one did any special cleaning.

I’m pretty sure no one realized that an hour and a half earlier . . . I couldn’t use this table for a project because it was completely covered in junk.

 

Related Posts:

Read Newer Post She Won’t Look in Here . . .
Read Older Post Dusting with Kids

Filed Under: My Survival Techniques | 22 Comments

Comments

  1. Sherri Jason says

    July 30, 2012 at 8:24 am

    Lol. This is just funny. I never even really thought of all those things but now you’ve given me a trick to try. Oh except that would mean that the house actually needs to be clean first. hmmm….

    Reply
  2. Crystal says

    July 30, 2012 at 8:47 am

    Wow, for the first time EVER reading your blog, you do something I don’t! LOL My big hang up is I don’t want to be seen as “halfway into a job”. I just have this thing where I don’t want to look like all I’ve been doing all day is cleaning. In my slob brain, if someone walks into my house and it’s clean, like really really clean- and I am doing something else like playing with the kids- then I’m giving the illusion that cleaning just magically happens and I am not in the least bit affected by being too tired or feeling overwhelmed. And that somehow makes me a modern day June Cleaver or Super MOM!

    Reply
    • Nony says

      July 30, 2012 at 2:28 pm

      I like your way! Much more noble!

      Reply
  3. Jodi says

    July 30, 2012 at 11:21 am

    That is the funniest and smartest trick I have ever heard.

    And makes me feel better about my in-progress sewing projects all over the house. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Katie says

    July 30, 2012 at 11:43 am

    I do the same thing. LOL Though I wish it looked better in just 2 hours.

    Reply
    • Nony says

      July 30, 2012 at 2:27 pm

      Yes, it’s times like this when I remember how much better it is than before I started on this deslobification journey!

      Reply
  5. Addary says

    July 30, 2012 at 1:38 pm

    I love the little sign thingy that reads to place get well cards on the mantel so people assume you have been sick and that is why your house is a mess. Ha but then someones comment went and ruined it when they mentioned you would have to dust said cards. 🙂 I find that I clean better and faster when expecting company. My in-laws plan to visit in 2 months and I already feel the pressure.

    Reply
    • Nony says

      July 30, 2012 at 2:26 pm

      Hee hee. Love it!

      Reply
  6. Katie B. of HousewifeHowTos.com says

    July 30, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    Nony, I so wish you’d posted this two weeks ago before my husband’s brain surgery and my mother-in-law’s announcement that she was coming to stay “indefinitely”. (In case you’re curious, “indefinitely” means until this Sunday, when I’ve bribed one of my sisters-in-law to come take the woman back home.)

    Now, what did I do, having found out that my husband had a brain tumor (which he was all sorts of casual and “let’s get the thing out of there and back to work” about)? I cleaned my house. Top to bottom. Like I needed that extra stress, right? (Or maybe it was a good stress release, who knows.)

    And then my OTHER sister-in-law showed up, having agreed to drive the mother-in-law here, and announced she was going to clean my house top to bottom FOR ME since I would be busy at the hospital watching over my husband.

    Next time, I’m just going to make it look like I’m working on a project. In every. single. room.

    Reply
    • Nony says

      July 30, 2012 at 2:25 pm

      Oh wow, Katie! You have been through so much! I hope your husband is doing well!

      And even though I know it was probably waaaayyyy more stress than you needed to do all that cleaning, maybe you can enjoy it and rest now. Just wish it would stay that way, right?

      Reply
      • Katie B. says

        July 30, 2012 at 6:01 pm

        Well, I’m one of those weird OCD people who gets energy for
        cleaning, so maybe it was a good thing I did it. But, yeah, if you crack the code on how to keep a place clean, let me know! (You know, after you’re through laughing all the way to the bank, because girl? You’d be RICH if you figured that out for all of us!)

        Reply
  7. [email protected] says

    July 30, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    Never thought of doing that. Impressive strategy!

    Hope you’re feeling better.

    Reply
  8. Lisa says

    August 1, 2012 at 6:11 pm

    I think that you and I are twins separated at birth. DH told me last night,
    after I got home from work, that his brother and family wanted to come visit this weekend. PANIC!! My house is a wreck. This has spurred us to start getting things back in order without having to do a chrisis cleaning. All this to say that you have great tips and are a good encourager to me. Thanks for sharing!
    Lisa :o)

    Reply
  9. Mandie K says

    August 12, 2012 at 2:14 pm

    You are my hero. I love it. 🙂

    Reply
  10. heyruthie says

    August 21, 2012 at 4:44 pm

    ugh…i have so done this. i have to make it “believable.” ALL the people in my life know about my “slob issues,” so if they walked into a “clean” house, they would KNOW I’d been killing myself all morning. I’ve been known to create a “mess” in order for the “scene” to be believable, because you KNOW that my “intentional mess” isn’t going to be 1/10 as gross as what my “real” mess looks like. After cleaning up the moldy bread, sippy cups of sour milk, and little-boy pee, it’s looks rather pristine to have a little “art project” out on the table, now doesn’t it? It’s always a nice touch to even go ahead and apologize for it, too, “I’m so sorry about the mess. my daughter and I were just creating a work of art together. It’s something we like to do each week.” LOL!!!!!

    Reply
  11. Melissa says

    March 12, 2014 at 7:12 pm

    This is perfect. And something I do.

    Reply
  12. Sarah says

    April 15, 2014 at 10:24 am

    Lol, I cracked up that your project is putting together a vacumm, ya know so you could clean

    Reply
  13. Karen says

    May 27, 2015 at 1:33 pm

    So funny story: I’m swiping through picture on my phone and I come across this picture on someone’s dining room table. I had no clue who’s dining room it was. I was starting to get a little freaked out. It was between two recent photos and I couldn’t for the life of me remember taking one of a stranger’s dining room table. Then I opened your blog and voila! There, (or rather here at the top of the page) was the mystery table!!
    I must have double tapped it without realizing at some point and it saved to my pictures. Lol. Not cleaning related, I know, but I have to share since I do now have a picture of Nony’s table saved to my phone.

    Reply
    • Dana White says

      May 27, 2015 at 9:10 pm

      That is so funny!!!

      Reply
  14. Mandi says

    June 25, 2015 at 10:23 am

    Two weekends before my daughter’s due date, we started the cleaning. (All grandparents live out of state and this is 1st and 2nd grandbaby on each side). So house had to be ready for Mom AND MIL! Both my husband and I have the mind set of “my” mom understands how I live, but for “my” MIL I need to keep the illusion! Anyway, we cleaned upstairs (bedrooms and bathroom) first because they could “sit” unused for the next week and a half and need minimal touch up when “the time” came. The downstairs living area was a mess…. Not really dirty, but cluttered. (Who has the energy to keep up when you are 38wk preggo, working full time, and as big as a house?)
    So, you know where I’m going with this, right? Water broke that Monday morning! All flat surfaces covered in months of mail, etc! Mom, Dad, MIL and BIL all cleaned up our house! I was embarrassed, but the drugs made it better! Hey, I’d been in the middle of a project for 9 months, right?

    Reply
  15. Tine says

    June 25, 2015 at 10:33 am

    I had a pastor’s wife tell me that when parishioners dropped by unexpectedly, she’d drag the vacuum cleaner into the middle of the living room to give the impression she was in the middle of cleaning. Great solution.

    Reply
  16. SammaMichelle says

    June 25, 2015 at 10:46 am

    LOVE IT!!!!! Wonder if that will work on my husband when he’s been out of town working all week 😉

    Reply

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A Slob Comes Clean is the completely honest (and never-ending) story of my deslobification process. As I find ways to keep my home under control, I share the truth about cleaning and organization methods that actually work for a real-life slob. And I'm funny.

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