Dorothy Brush "Random Thoughts" Published Aug. 27, 2003

Keeping the castle clean is an ongoing battle

Nothing can upset my usually serene state of mind as much as the arrival of a totally unexpected guest. She might be a neighbor who has never been in my home, or she might be a friend of years gone by just passing through town. Note I am speaking of females because their eyes are much sharper when it comes to evaluating housekeeping skills.

The sad part of these visits is that they unfailingly coincide with the day I put off cleaning until I had the mountain of ironing completed or finished that great novel or some other excuse that seemed perfectly logical. These are the times when I see my home as others see it. It is an excruciating experience because these visitors have seldom or never been in my home and they have no basis for comparison.

I know if I try to make excuses about the way the house looks things will only look that much more worse, so I sit and chat giving the impression all is fine. Controlled on the outside but cringing on the inside.

Of course it is a day when the sun is shining brilliantly, making the streaked windows look even worse. Good old Sol also spotlights the dust on furniture. Yesterday's papers are strewn carelessly about. Nature's mobile, created by the ever present household spider, floats artistically from the ceiling.

As I try to be a charming and scintillating conversationalist my mind is trying to justify the state of the house. A little voice inside my head says, "Do you go to someone's house to judge what kind of housekeeper they are?" The answer is a self righteous, "No!" But then my mind rolls a film of times past when I have heard women discussing the subject. "You should have seen the mess!" of "She is so efficient I was really shocked to see how she kept house."

The worst experience I ever had was when my mother-in-law showed up two days early for her biannual visit. I had a perfectly legitimate excuse for the state of my house. I had been laid low with a slight concussion from a stray basketball that landed on my head. But really how does a mature woman make anything so dumb sound plausible?

The logical conclusion to these painful experiences should be to always keep my house in order, but being human I tend to think it will never happen again. Of course it does and as I close the door behind each unexpected guest I move through the house with tornadic energy. I don't stop until every speck of dust is rearranged and the house is clean enough to pass an inspecting general's critical eye. It is too late to make a difference that I've locked the barn after the chickens have hatched or that a stitch in time would have won the war.

To all those people who delight in the element of surprise, forget it. For the sake of the countless, unknown sisters skilled in the art of instant housekeeping, please phone before you drop in. Five minutes of warning can make all the difference.

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Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday.