What are you looking at?

I don't keep a tremendously clean house, I admit it. But then I see shows like "How Clean is Your House?" and I gag and throw up in my mouth and realize that I keep a damn clean house, comparatively. But it's not up to my mother's standards, who is, admittedly, crazy. My mother can't have anyone over without a pretty rigorous cleaning of her already pretty dang clean house, and so she's mostly chosen to not have anyone over. I consciously make to choice to let people see a messy house versus avoiding people contact. Ahh, familial neuroses...

I've been trying to be more dedicated to regular cleaning and straightening for a few weeks now, and about a month ago I signed up for 'Fly Lady'. It's a system and a book and apparently, an ostrich feather duster, that's designed to help people get out from a messy house. And it has some great features as a 'program'. Getting into habits and breaking down the jobs to manageable portions are key. I stopped really going after the site sent out an inspirational video, set to music, of people's clean sinks. I think they've collectively lost their feather dustered minds. But setting a time for fifteen minutes and cleaning what I can in that time works for me, so I have been doing that.

I invited a good number of people over to play on Thursday, and I've been trying to prepare my house for this. I did fifteen minutes in three different rooms today. Since it's moms with toddlers that are coming, I know that they'll mostly be concerned about a) things on the floor that could hurt their kids and b) comforting themselves that at least their house is cleaner than mine. I'm all about making someone feel better about their home.

While I was cleaning I noticed my vent covers, and ended up scrubbing three of them. Now I look at them happily as I walk by, almost lovingly, you could say. And I wonder if other people noticed how dirty my vent covers were. Do you notice minutia like that at someone else's home?