A tidy house is a beautiful thing for me. The problem with a tidy house, however, is twofold: I don’t enjoy cleaning. I live in a house of five pigs.
Now to some of you those two things may be easy enough to overcome. Start a cleaning schedule. Develop a routine. Get everyone to pick up after themselves. Create new habits. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I’ve heard it all before. And, at various times I’ve even tried it. I’ve written to do lists. I’ve organized cleaning “notebooks”. I’ve yelled at the kids and hubby-dear to put their stuff away. I’ve even maintained an orderly house…for all of about 72 hours. But in the end…disaster, and we’re right back to Messyville.
My ultra clean mom used to shake her head in dismay at my untidiness. And, my poor mother-in-law. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to “scrape the couch” in order to create a place for her to sit when she and my father-in-law have popped by unannounced—or announced.
This week, in particular, I have a large honey-do list of things I’d like to accomplish. Cleaning is one of them. We have company coming. Out-of-town company. Overnight company. Company we don’t really know. (Yikes!)
We rarely host overnight visitors and when we do it’s usually only those that we know well enough to allow into the inner sanctum i.e. those that can deal with our pigginess, step over the pile of whatever, handle our unfinished projects (that’s another post in itself) and love us in spite of it.
So today with the threat of company coming, I broke down. I had to.
I woke up way too early. Went straight to the computer. Wasted time down the rabbit hole. Went back to bed and woke up a second time and scampered to get the kids ready and out the door to go see Midori give a master lesson for a couple of kids from ESYO. Then I headed out to our local home improvement store where I bought stuff to fill the glass container I thrifted yesterday from St. Vinnies to make a terrarium. Back at home I assembled, not one but TWO terrariums—and I even replanted some lucky bamboo. The girls, who during my terrarium-making, got inspired and started creating fairy houses to put into my new biomes. Terrariums and fairy houses completed, it was off to cook a lame-o dinner and post pictures on Facebook and Instagram of our lovely creations. And, then, holy moly, low and behold, time for bed. 
All afternoon and all evening we had worked. Feverishly I might add.
But not at cleaning.
Right now my house has just as many piles as it did this morning. The clean laundry is still folded and resting on the couch. Dinner dishes are piled in the sink. Wet towels are haphazardly thrown over that wire thing in the bathroom. But, man alive, we’ve got some really cool fairy houses and some fun new terrariums.
Plus I’ve still got seven more days to get my act together and clean for our upcoming guests.
Please pray for me.
