We’re having a Tinkerbell party.
Soon.
Like very, very, right-around-the-corner, practically yesterday, soon. (I can feel the stress hives creeping up my neck just writing this!) It’s going to be a low key, cook-out with friends, type of party. So, just for the record, it’s not the party that’s got me all hyped up. I’m actually looking forward to that part. That part means the other part is over.
You know, the preparty part? The chaos turned every-time-we’re-expecting-company ritual we indulge any time we invite people over because our TO-DO list is just so ridiculously long we don’t even write it down to save ourselves from that totally self-defeating feeling of being absolutely overwhelmed, part?
That’s what we’ve been doing around here for about a solid week now.
You know, the kind of cleaning that makes you realize how much cleaning you haven’t been doing lately–even though it seems like all you ever do is clean, right? The kind of cleaning that makes you wish you’d bought stock in Clorox before you began?
Yeah, that kind.
I’m not saying our house isn’t clean. We’ve all gotten pretty good (give or take a few night meeting weeks) about keeping it neat and livable. It looks clean on any given day. (And since we have pets, I’m very liberal with the Febreeze, so it smells nice and clean.)
But come on–I’m a working wife and mom of 3 kids under the age of 7 (for a few more days, anyway) who spend their evenings tromping through cow pastures and cleaning chicken houses. It’s been a while since I dusted the blinds in our bathroom.
Quite a while.
But this is the kind of cleaning that leads to more cleaning…and more cleaning…
…And suddenly you find yourself on your hands and knees under the dining room table with a paint brush, fixing scuff marks on the baseboards, which you discovered while trying to scrub crayon scribbles off the tile, which you discovered while mopping what you hope was dried up orange juice, which you discovered while…you see where I’m going here?
All because you invited a few friends over to eat hamburgers on the porch while you hop their kids up on cake and ice cream and send them to run through a sprinkler.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Are any of our guests really going to crawl under my son’s bed to see if I vacuumed that icky slot between the wall and the carpet behind the tub of winter clothes? I don’t think so. (But it’s clean if they do!)
All I’m saying is this…
DON’T EAT OFF THE FLOOR.
We don’t have a 5 second rule in this house.
But we did scrub the trashcans with clorox!
