Fix Up, Look Sharp

for the in-laws are on their way.

I'm sure that you all, dear readers, have a lovely impression of me through my blog posts.  You imagine me to be of average height, slightly overweight with a pointy ear, the right one remember.  You also envisage that the Casa Very Bored is a shiny new pin of an apartment and that I harbour an almost OCD love of housework, be-decked in a lovely spotty pinny from Cath Kidston I only pop onto twitter after I've ironed front creases into t'husband's undercrackers.  That all my surfaces are dust free, there is sunshine streaming through the gleaming windows and my floors are so clean you could eat your dinner off them.  That there is a lemon fresh aroma of cleaning products ever present in the air and royalty could grace our thrones.

You'd be wrong.  Well not the first bit about the pointy ear, but after that, sorry to disappoint you all but in real life, away from the gaze of twitter and blogsville, I am actually, shock, horror.  A right scutty mare.  There, I've come clean (bad pun intentional) I don't particularly like housework.  My home isn't quite in need of the rubber-gloved hands of Kim & Aggie, hopefully the insides of my toilet bowls do not warrant scraping off and sticking in a petri dish for lab analysis, I doubt anyone would contract E-coli from the contents of my fridge, but still I tend to err towards the 'wait until it really needs to be done' mindset of cleaning.  The duster and I are not good buddies, a situation that is made worse by the interfering mediums that are the shiny black electronic gadgets that t'husband likes to collect.  The mop and I, well we're not on good terms at all, meeting but just once a week, a fraught affair with much muttering of industrial language under my breath when the thing leaves streaks all over the tiles.

Cleaning Legends

Over and above the routine jobs that have to be done each week, the only time I ever deep clean our apartment is when we have visitors.  I suddenly become a woman possessed, afraid that for some reason our visitors will take it upon themselves to check under the microwave for crumbs and complain to each other out of ear shot that I've not dusted on top of the door frames.  I develop this primal urge to clean everything, regardless of whether it can be seen or not.  I also, just to add immense pressure to myself, decide that all this ridiculous deep cleaning must happen no more than 24 hour before the guests turn up least some dirt have settled in the meantime.  This usually means that half an hour before the expected arrival I can be found on my hands and knees scrubbing the grouting on the floor tiles in our bedroom with a cif loaded nail-brush.

Quite why I feel I need to go to such lengths to clean areas that won't be seen is beyond me, but the arrival of my mother-in-law in particular has my cleaning ritual go into overdrive.  I have given myself a list as long as my arm of jobs that I have deemed essential to do tomorrow prior to the in-laws arrival on Saturday morning, so if you don't see me online today it'll be because I am cleaning the clock faces with bicarb of soda and an old toothbrush.

Adeu