Quick! Stash the dirty dishes in the oven!” When company’s coming, we can find ourselves taking emergency measures. But rather than conceal any skeletons in the closet, follow a few guidelines to create a state of household affairs where you have little or nothing to hide.

Prioritize

Between cleaning and invitations and food preparations, plus the everyday obligations of life, let’s face it — all the spring-cleaning types of projects you can think of aren’t going to get done now. Decide what will make your guests most comfortable. Then count down the days (or hours, as the case may be) till you’ll open the front door to visitors, and divide your strategic tasks into the time you have.

 

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Be Discriminating

Sometimes there is a difference between impressively shiny and “clean enough to be healthy.” When you are short on time, remove mold, grime and soap scum from the bathtub, but leave the hard water deposits for another day. Don’t even think about alphabetizing your CD library. Sparkling windows are a nice touch, but not essential to health and comfort. If you concentrate on the latter, you’ll be surprised how beautiful the overall picture of your home will be, even if you don’t have time to make every detail perfect.

Make Space

Getting rid of excess stuff will not only be easier on visitors’ eyes, it will save you a lot of work and time in the long run, since you won’t have to dust it or look under it for something you lost. But de-cluttering can initially be a time-consuming activity. Think for a minute of long-term solutions that will make the biggest difference the most quickly.

 

• Adequate Housing: It may be that you need a new piece of furniture, such as a bookcase or cabinet, that will create immediate order and free up far more space than it uses.
  
  
• Paper Stacks: Many organizational experts will tell you never to pick up a stack of papers and put it in the closet to get it out of the way for company. The truth is, if you’ve let a stack appear over time, it may now take hours to properly file, throw away, think through or make plans based on each piece of information. If you just don’t have those hours now, use boxes or manilla file folders to divide up the papers into as many loose categories as you can quickly organize them into. Label the boxes and folders by category and put them in an accessible place. Do not tell yourself you are finished with this task, however, until you have made one or more appointments with yourself, on your calendar, to move these sheaves to their final destination, whether it be the filing cabinet or the trash.
  
  
• Tour of Duty: Set the timer for an hour. Arm yourself with a large garbage bag for obvious trash, a box for things to give away and a box for ferrying items to a different place in the house. Work your way in a circle around the rooms your guests will use the most: entry ways, living areas, bathroom, kitchen, guest rooms. Keep in mind that long-term company will need places to put away clothes and personal supplies, so you may want to make room by clearing out a couple of drawers, putting their contents in your relocation box and keeping them temporarily in another place in your home.
  

If you find you are spending too much time deciding about an item that defies categories, simply pass it up and leave it for another day. Your purpose now is to do those things in the time you have that will put your guests most at ease. Don’t allow yourself to go back and forth. Try to make one trip through the house with your little entourage of boxes. Use the Whiff Test Odors are powerful clues to where your dirtiest dirt lies — and it does no good whatsoever to try to hide them out of sight. Take special notice of the scent when you return home from work. If you’ve been home for a while, even foul smells may escape your notice. Step outside for a few minutes before taking your nose for a stroll through the house. Or try a trick from the perfume parlor and breathe a deep breath from the coffee bean jar to renew your olfactory sense.

 

 

If you find a sour smell, keep in mind that the real remedy is to clean the source, not to mask it with scented products.

What you may discover:

 

• Rancid Refrigerator: Inspect every container and throw away all questionable foods. This is an especially lousy time to get (or give) food poisoning, so resist the temptation to save something out of frugality. Wipe up spills, first allowing a little water to sit for a moment on dried liquids. Check for drips and puddles beneath the fruit, vegetable and meat drawers. Then wipe the entire inside of the refrigerator down with a sanitizing bleach and water mixture.
  
  
• Pet Odors: Change the kitty litter. Wash the dog and his bed. Check the floor for pet accidents. Dust, vacuum and mop pet areas.
  
  
• Stuffy Bedrooms: Wash the bed linens and any other dirty laundry, dust and vacuum, open the windows and let in a little fresh air.
  
  
• Urine in the Bathroom: Time to detail the toilet and surrounding floor — and possibly lower regions of adjacent walls if you have a poor aimer in the family. After cleaning the bowl, take an old toothbrush and a cleaner containing enzymes (read the ingredients in your laundry detergent, which, diluted with water, may be a strong candidate for the job), and clean the seat hinges. Pop the seat bolt caps and clean inside of them, then do under the caps for the bolts at the base of the toilet. Clean thoroughly around the sealant between commode and floor. Then do an all-over wipe-down, remembering the underside of the seat, the full outside of the bowl, the graceful contours of porcelain beneath the tank. Then finally do the floor.

Remember that many vinyl floors come with small dimples, which may harbor tiny collections of dried urine. You may want to make the floor wet with one pass, allow to sit for a moment in order to let both water and enzymes work, then give the area an enthusiastic rub. Addressing the floor by hand allows you to clean thoroughly in corners where urine may reside. But if you are tired of kneeling at this point, you can purchase bathroom-cleaning tools with long handles and heads that may just be small enough to move in and out of the cramped area behind your toilet.

With fresh cleaning cloths, go over the area twice more, to remove all dirt and to rinse cleaning chemical residue. Not Least Dusting and vacuuming are more than just a spiffing of your décor. These really do fall into the “clean enough to be healthy” category when you are prioritizing cleaning projects. Dust that you remove from furniture and floors has no chance to puff up into the air, or more to the point, into the lungs of your friends who may suffer from allergies or asthma. That your home looks beautiful when you are done just makes the occasion all the more fun.