apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Hey, don't go lumping us all in your naughty boat... ;-) I've NEVER peeked in someone's medicine cabinet! I'm nosy by nature - but that's just not something that I've felt the compulsion to do. Now, eavesdropping on strangers, that's a different story...

I'm with LilyC.
Maybe you should stop judging your friends homes so harshly and in return, they might let you see how they really live.

I want to live in a museum

how long would "a lot" of time be for cleaning up before guests come over?

I try to tidy up every day but I actually am glad for the extra motivation when I know we will have visitors to tidy or clean a bit more thoroughly.

Some of my friends have commented that my apartment is "annoyingly spotless" but I keep it that way for me, not for them! I guess I'm just a neat person.

Forgive me, Abby, if I think you sound like a walking contradiction...

Remember this gem? Did you actually read the responses you received?

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/what-does-your-home-say-about-you-062819

Is it not a wonder why your "friends" hide/stage things in their home when you come around? I would. I mean, at what point is a stack of papers "normal" and at what point are they a "chaotic mess?"

Run your home how you wish, but the rest of us don't require an instruction manual and most people don't take orders being chirped at them lightly.

(I happen to know half a dozen folks who keep fresh flowers in rotation on a regular basis, regardless of house guests or not.)

I like my house to be "company ready" all the time. That is to say - pleasant and organized. However, it isn't for company. If I'm going to take the trouble to match paint colors and have furniture we really like, having a messy room ruins the effect for the people who live in it. (And if you've ever seen the BBC's How Clean Is Your House, you know most people's spaces look amazingly wonderful when just clean... even if the decor isn't anything special.)

It's kind of a self-love thing. We don't eat off of paper plates because nobody's around to appreciate the nice plates, or candles or flowers. Those are for us to enjoy every day.

I do clear away the newspaper and mail pile when guests are coming, but we don't have to do anything else, so that's good, in terms of reducing stress when already trying to prepare a meal for them, or whatever.

I keep things mostly tidy day-to-day but with a 900 sq. ft. apartment for 2 humans and 2 cats, it simply isn't guest-ready on the spot. The way we live in our small space isn't the way we entertain in it, so it is necessary to spend time cleaning/re-arranging when we are expecting guests or entertaining. And thats just fine with me.

I also buy flowers for myself, light candles almost every night and like to keep the house tidy and, dare I say, a little bit "staged" for my own enjoyment. I find the house more relaxing and more comfortable when it looks nice.

If I read the freaking phrase "landing strip" one more time I may be forced to delete AT (my favorite site!) from my bookmarks. That phrase jumped the shark on this site eons ago. Please stop with the GD landing strips.

Griffin... Just do what I do. Whenever I see or head "landing strip", I think of a bikini wax. When it's not quiet a Brazilian, there's a landing strip left. lol.

Hee, I kind of like the excuse of people coming over to do a super good cleaning. Then when they leave, and I have dumped the mess in the dishwasher, my house is deliciously clean underneath. AND I had a good party.

~k

I love having fresh-cut flowers in my house at all times. I go to the farmer's market on saturdays and find some that will hopefully last the week. I live alone, and the flowers make me feel special. And they're an added attraction is company shows up.

Organized Entropy over here. A lot of "Don't touch that pile, that receipt is in there!" mitigated by the fact that we love entertaining. So the carousel of guests and cleaning go round and round on a fairly regular basis. Ha.

Griffin... shhhh, the new readers will hear you! (sorry, that's from my previous favorite blog, ZeFrank).

I'm one of those people who keeps a tidy house because it makes me feel good, and I cannot for the life of me understand how people can live with clutter and multiple piles. (I also understand how those who are ok with clutter cannot understand the compulsion to be tidy). I am SO thankful that my partner is just as obsessively compulsive as I am about this. We don't seem 'weird' to eachother.

But I had a friend over for lunch this weekend and was embarassed to see how nutty I'm getting. She took a bite of some bread and crumbs fell to the table. Totally normal -- that's what tables are for, after all. But I found myself tidying up the crumbs before we'd finished our meal. When I saw myself doing it, I stopped immediately. I was mortified at my own behavior -- but equally amused that my partner and I do it unconciously and it's "normal" for us.

I do have a pile, just to be clear. I'm not *that* freakish. But there's only one pile and it's on my desk where I can hide it away behind doors and even I don't have to see it.

Heh, yeah. I'm a freak.

I agree with most everyone in here. The benefits from having a clean house and a steady stream of happy and satisfied company far outweigh the questions that pop in my head (not really) once in a while of how cleaning robs me of my true identity. Once we believed that being clean is divine. It only became a "problem" when somebody called it something that sounds clinically disturbing (blankmania, thisphilia, thatphobe) and pathologized it. People just want their shit to be clean. If you don't want that, maybe you should find another friend in need of condescension and pity.

But I do understand the other point of the entry: yeah keep it clean, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Although the landing strip (landing strip, landing strip, landing strip) idea usually doesn't work because it just migrates the gathering point for crap into another area of the house (to the first place people see when they enter your house, no less), designing your chores around your life instead of the other way around allows you to live your life. But it shouldn't be "clean less," but "clean more effectively." A domestic life, after all, is still life...and life worth living.

Oh yeah, dinosaurs and pink flowers = kick ass combo.

I would not want a friend as critical as you. I work alot and may have a mess in my home, not like this but I don't pick up all the time cause I like to relax when I get home and snuggle with my babies. I never snoop in someones medicine cabinet unless I'm dating them.

I just hope we can all agree that there is a difference between a cluttered home and a dirty home. It sometimes seems that people don't remember that there is a distinction to be made.

While I don't care for clutter, it does happen in most homes, including mine, from time to time. In some homes, it is there all the time. We all have friends or family who start every sentence with, "Let me just move this and we can (insert activity here)..."

However, I have to draw the line at a dirty home. If you need to move a pile of magazines so I can sit down, that's fine. If you move the pile of magazines and I critters crawl out, that is NOT fine. That is bad.

And, last point: having an uncluttered home does not guarantee having a clean home.

I love reading comments section, especially with an article like this one. my house? messy but clean. company = inspiration to tidy up. there's a difference between clean and tidy. we are a creative family who all like visual stimulation - we need to see things to operate effectively. Its the differences that make the world go 'round - and as I said to a friend recently - you are always welcome over - you may have to shift a pile of something to sit down and the coffee is DIY - but my house is always open. as it should be, it is.