Use 'Company Ready' to Get to 'You Ready'

Over at the Unfuck Your Habitat home cleaning site is a post whose general sentiment I agree with, but to which I will add my two cents on implementation.

Yes. "You Ready" is better than "Company Ready" as an overall goal for home cleanliness for moral and practical reasons -- not to mention inspiring some thought on the role of altruism in causing the cycle of messiness and panic cleaning this post alludes to.

But I disagree with bolded part of the otherwise strong closing:

Focus on making your house "you ready." Bring it, gradually, up to your standards of cleanliness. Make it so that you're comfortable, and so that you enjoy looking around your home. When you reach that point, your house will always be company ready. You're the most important person who will step through your door. Try to make your living space reflect that. [bold added]

Sometimes life will get in the way of that.

For example, my wife recently invited a colleague and her young family over to our home since we're along a Mardi Gras parade route. We're in the middle of moving our daughter out of our downstairs guest room and into her permanent room upstairs and not fully out of our moving boxes. This was on top of us being very cluttered from a busy period.

This would have been embarrassing on short notice, but there was enough lead time that it was easy to combine the push to get the house uncluttered again with getting a few things in better shape to move our daughter and -- my big win here -- finally getting the area around our side entrance straightened out.

The side area was cluttered, but workable enough that I could prioritize other things, but I was always low-grade annoyed with it. Now, it has a functioning landing zone for the kids to put their school things and shoes away, and the coat closet, now being easy to reach, can keep the coat rack uncluttered. Oh, and my daughter's trombone has its own little corner now, and won't be getting knocked over anymore.

More generally, I think some amount of tidying is probably always necessary ahead of any lengthy visit, but this will decrease over time.

As part of prepping for guests and gradually getting one's house up to standards, I like to approach every tidying-up as a chance to make a big improvement I've been wanting, but haven't gotten around to.

-- CAV

P.S. I thought of another issue regarding that area I straightened out: One can acclimatize to a mess and become "blind" to it over time. If I recall correctly, the author of UFYH recommends using photographs to overcome this, but I think the prospect of guests coming can help cure this kind of "blindness," too.