Putting On The Dog...

First up, fun fact time....in case you dont know to "put on the dog" is an idiom meaning to get extra fancy, for a special event. Often times unheard of uless you live in the deep south, or you have watched Sweet Home Alabama a million and a half times(said in the scene where MIL comes to visit) and had to look it up.

We have family coming for the weekend in two weeks, so naturally we are beginning to prepare the house now....here's my problem with that why is it that we as a society have such an issue with people seeing how we really live? I remember when I was younger and my mother would go absolutely crazy before we had guests, cleaning every centemeter of the house, getting in tizzies where she throws all manner of important stuff out because it just happened to be on the counter(where under any other normal circumstance it would be kept) so therefore it is clutter and has to go. I remember telling her "Calm down, it doesn't have to be perfect, why are you trying to make it look different? This is where we live, and if they have a problem with that they can go elsewhere" And I would vow to myself to never be the same way when I had my own house and family.....

....Fastforward to today, I too am doing the same thing as my mother always did. I am washing baseboards, shoving things in places I will never remember just to get them "uncluttered", rearranging furniture, making it look like a gosh darn Better Homes & Gardens issue up in this bitch just so my company can have it looking like no normal house ever would and get the impression that we are perfect people.
I mean sure when you, walk into someones house and its perfectly organized and clean you're first thought is "wow , this is really nice". BUT your immediate second thought is most likely the same as mine, "wait, are they like psycho's or something am I about to get murdered? Or are they just really good at the emergency cleaning scurry and instead if I open that closet there is the real content of thier house going to explode out?" Heck, I bet even Martha Stewart's house looks normal and lived in when its not full of cameras. It's not messy its lived in, its your home, your sanctuary, you shouldn't have to change it to please people just passing through.

However, as sad as it is to say, that's the norm, you clean everything perfectly before company or you get labels, labels like slob, or dirty, or trashy. So that's just the way it has to be. Even if said company has known you and your tendencies your entire life and used to be there with you trying to talk reason into your panicking mother. Yes, this is my home, my sanctuary, my space in the world...but for a weekend, its going to be a freakin minimansion the likes of which would make Pinterest jealous.....

*steps off soapbox, picks it up and saunters into the sunset to go put it away and finish mopping*