And as you hang up the phone and survey your chaotic surroundings, your adrenalin starts to gush. Your home is a Level 8 cleaning disaster, and your whole body screams EMERGENCY! Well, now is clearly not the time for the major home cleaning you've been planning. But maybe there are a few cosmetic adjustments you can make in the precious few minutes before your guests arrive. In other words, if you can't do the whole face-lift, try a little make-up instead.
It may not happen to everyone, but I remember frequent cleaning frenzies from my childhood. A lot was accomplished in a very short time. And with Christmas looming before us, impromptu visits are sure to be on the rise. It seems to be a given: the more hectic your schedule, the more likely you are to have unexpected guests. The situation calls for some bare-bones prioritizing -- an emergency cleaning triage, so to speak.
Start with the most public areas of your home: living room, kitchen and/or dining areas, and bathroom. If you're terminally disorganized, like me, it helps to use one box or bag for each room, and put all the papers, magazines, and miscellaneous clutter you find in each room into its respective container. You can store these in a private space in your home, preferably a room with a door on it. You can sort through these later, at your leisure, when your guests have gone their merry way.
When clearing up the clutter, it's important to make sure you're not actually making the situation worse. For example, there is a cardinal rule in emergency cleaning: Do not touch hard surface furniture. Touching may disturb the patina of dust that's built up, and will draw your visitor's eye like a flashing beacon. And if moving a pile of books will only reveal a clean silhouette on an otherwise uniformly dusty surface, you may be better off leaving the clutter where it is.
If your unexpected guests will be near the kitchen, and there's a pile of dirty dishes in your sink and on your counter, hide them in the dishwasher if you have one. If you don't have a dishwasher, stuff them into the oven instead. (When I was single, I think that was actually the only time I would use the oven. And when I moved, all the oven needed was a thorough dusting.)
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