Getting Your Bathroom Ready for Guests
When I planned to invite our friends over for a BBQ, I also planned to have my house cleaned before the day of our party. And I mean cleaned by someone else. See, I’d bought a coupon for housecleaning services, and I decided this was the perfect time to use it.
A few weeks before the party, I called the housecleaning company – and heard this message: “Beep-bo-beeeeep! The number you are calling is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.”
Um, what?
I tried again, got the same message and immediately called the place where I’d bought the coupon. The very nice lady on the phone tried the number, got the same message and then tracked down a second number for me to try, warning me that when she tried the second number, she got a message saying the mailbox was full.
Um, what?
After trying both numbers a couple other times, I decided to get a refund. I didn’t see any sense in waiting for the housecleaning company to get their stuff together while my house got more and more dirty. But that left me with $49 and a dirty house – and the clock was ticking as my party came closer and closer.
I realize this is a real first-world problem, and you’re probably all playing tiny violins for me as I whine. Don’t worry. I am capable of cleaning my own tiny house. And so I did. I didn’t like it, no I did not. But I cleaned it, and while things weren’t necessarily sparkling in my house, they were clean enough.
Except my bathroom.
I have some blind spots when it comes to getting my bathroom spic and span. Literally. Or close to it. (It’s always tricky to use the word, “literally,” but I really think it applies here.) See, I wear contacts. But not when I’m in the shower. So because I’m blind as a bat (but not literally) in the shower, I don’t notice when it’s getting grimy. Same goes for the under-the-seat part of the toilet. I don’t lift the seat, and Mark always puts it down. So . . . I kind of forget to clean it sometimes.
[I realize that some of you may not be able to comprehend not cleaning my entire bathroom every single week. Just chalk it up to me giving up on perfect - and give me a little notice before visiting my house - and we'll be just fine.]
Because I was so bummed out about not getting to use my housecleaning coupon before my friends (who always have super clean houses, by the way) came over, I decided to kick things up a notch in the bathroom. (Despite my blind spots and cleaning aversion, I realize that the bathroom is the place most guests see when they visit and a great place to make them feel welcome.)
The morning before my friends came over, Annalyn and I took a trip to the store. We had been needing new bathroom towels, so we bought pretty, super soft ones. I also got a new reed diffuser that smells like clean laundry and a box of Kleenex paper hand towels. I’d never bought the hand towels before, but this will not be the last time I do, I’m sure. My hand towel hangs over my toilet paper roll, and it’s annoying. Wet hands + hand towel over TP = wet TP. Ew.
By the time my friends arrived, I felt pretty good about my house. Sure, there might have been cat hair tumbleweeds hiding under my couch. But my bathroom looked good!
So, just in case you find yourself in a predicament like mine (friends coming over, have to clean your own house, wah-waaahhh) and want to distract them from the dust under your couches with a shiny bathroom, here are some tips:
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