How Often Is Your House "Company Ready"?

Always - that is, if you know me well enough to drop by, then you don't (or shouldn't) care what my house looks like. :)

100% of the time. If you are gonna be company in my house, you likely already know that we have 2 kids, 3 dogs and 3 cats. Even right after cleaning, there is probably toys in various places and probably grass that was carried in by the dogs. If you are looking for perfection and are offended that my house isn't perfect, then you probably won't be back. There is SO much more to a happy life than a house kept so perfect.

Sometimes not even when company is coming! : ) It is amazing what the second child has done to my idea of "company ready."

There was this one day back in 06..........

:p

Always. I have issues . . .

Ugh...I think people just showing up is SO rude. I don't even answer my door. I mean, how do they know we don't have some major thing going on in our life.

If I KNOW people are coming, I think my house is usually fine. If it's in the evening, it's much more fine then in the morning.

For about 4 hours on Sunday afternoon. ;) I get the majority of cleaning done on the weekend and try to start Mondays with a clean slate.

So, if Ed McMahaon is planning on bringing a giant check, he should probably call 1st!

My house is always company ready :) See ... I don't change myself just because company is coming over. I do try to make sure the toilets are flushed and relatively clean and no underwear are in the main areas. But anyone who doesn't like how I keep house ... isn't my friend and isn't welcome in the first place :)

Now I will say that my house is in no way unsanitary or disgustingly dirty. So I don't care what people think about my lived in cluttered house :)

If we're expecting company, it's ready.

If not, it's enter at your own risk. If someone wants to just show up, fine. But be prepared to step on a small item or two, see a few dishes in the sink, or get a fantastic whiff of the cat poo I haven't gotten to yet.

Our house is "company ready" for about 1 hour after our cleaning person comes and maybe 1 hour before company arrives.

Since we don't have guests very often, it's not "company ready" very often.

Only when I'm expecting company. Jim and Angela--I have a brother like you. His wife once told him, "There's medication for people like you." (-:

Only if company is expected!

My daughter and I live in a one-bedroom, three-room apt. Her bike, rollar blades, and toys, along with my "office" are in the livingroom. The cat box and mouse house are relatively clean, but the hamper is overflowing...

If you are here to see me, I'll sweep the toys off the couch and welcome you to sit down!

Rarely, I have 2 toddler in the house. I will say that if i know someone is coming my house (at least the downstairs) is acceptable for company. When i am hosting something like a birthday party both upstairs and down are spotless (in case someone needs ot use the upstairs bathroom) so maybe 2 or 3 times a year it is truely completely ready for company.

When I know someone is coming :)

Only if I plan on having company over. Which is 1 or 2 times per year. Ha!

Only when we are having company!
That's not the biggest priority in my life...my husband and I both work and our two kids play multiple sports and have various other activities we shuffle them around to...and weekends are for fun!!

I agree...This depends on the company and what your definition of "ready" is!

I would say 90% of the time. I always try to make sure my house looks presentable and picked up. We always had people "dropping in" when I was growing up because of where we lived and I felt like our house was a mess. I think that's why to this day I am the way I am.

love unexpected company....love living in a place where friends can drop by.

Used to happen a lot more....& we miss it. :)

"Normally", all the time... I'm not a clutter bug, I hate dishes in the sink, I make the beds every morning, I have a roomba that comes out and vacuums our tile every morning, etc... My house isn't perfect by any means, but I'm not embarrassed :)

Ours is always about 50% company ready, if someone was to just pop by un-announced, they are going to see a lot of toys, some clothes, and a few kid related dishes around, but its not going to scream, DISGUSTING. The bathrooms are generally clean, unless a kid had a major issue with the potty chair. In that case I warn someone. I never am 100% ready for the pop by's. this makes me a little neurotic, and sometimes not the most gracious host, but in all most of my good friends and family are great about calling first. So I at least can throw the last pee diaper I placed on to the mantle and forgot to throw after running to save my 1 year old from certain death.

If you are "stopping by" my place, you know us pretty well (we live out in the boonies!) and I know you're coming to see "us", not my house!

Our house is typically clean, but sometimes cluttered. I have 2 young boys :) I can't stand to leave my kitchen dirty so it gets cleaned up after every meal and the guest bathroom is the one my boys use so I clean the toilet and wipe it down a few times a week. If those 2 things are clean, I am totally fine with company! I love unexpected company and family/friends are always welcome, but b/c of where we live it doesn't happen often.

I'm with the others who say if you're stopping by my house you know me well enough to know how busy I am and there may be an unfolded load or three of laundry on the couch, the table might not be cleared, and there may be some shoes by the front door. If that's a problem, I've got two comfy chairs on the porch we can chat on :).

This depends on the company and what your definition of "ready" is!

I would have to say maybe once a month, because thats about how often I deep clean the house.

Ha, ha, ha! I'd say one day a week, after we've done our big clean. The rest of the week, it's not pretty. My DH has OCD, though, so our standards are a bit high, so it's never scary messy. We just wouldn't be happy to have unexpected guests with it looking that way.

I'm with Bug on this one. I hate when people just "drop by." Call first, people!

That being said, if somebody calls me, my house is pretty much always within 20 minutes of being "company ready." There are usually a few items that I will straighten up or toys to be put away, maybe quickly run the vacuum, but in general, all of the areas of the house where people would gather (kitchen, family room, downstairs bathroom) are clean all the time.

I wish with all my heart that there was a way for all of you to touch nothing but yur camera and all take a quick snap of your living room or kitchen and post it so we could all see, what your definition is.

I feel I am so hard on myself, but maybe others are worse? Or maybe i am super failing and no one is mean enough to say it outright.

I' super visual so i would have to see the sticky cheerios on the table and the dirty underwear hanging from the couch cushions to realy know what any ofyou are describing.

It depends on the type of company you are talking about ;-) Dinner party company has different criteria to just hanging out company. My house is hanging out company ready about 95 % of the time. I spend an hour every day cleaning. My bathrooms and kitchen are wiped down every morning and night, I vacuum the main living area ever night, and wash the floor twice a week...kids know to not leave toys in the kitching/living room area. There is usually some stuff on the kitchen table, but a little "stuff" is OK by me.

Just do not go into my office! It's my one "problem" area at the moment. My bedroom is always a work in progress too....books piled everywhere. I do vacuum these rooms twice a week, though, so clean but not necessarily organized.

Always... Angela G and I have issues....

For drop ins? Um....I plead the fifth? If the company is in the same age range, our house is great all the time! Crayons to find under the couch! Cracker boxes on the counter! But for adults....I prefer they call. Really prefer they call.

Our house is usually pretty tidy but that's out of necessity for us - not company LOL. It's a small house so things have to stay relatively neat so there's room to function. I guess a perk of a small house is less time spent cleaning :)

On the days that I am expecting company...

Well, I'm a little bit of an "anti-clutter fanatic" and a neat freak. My husband is extremely neat. My son? That's another story! LOL
Truthfully, rarely would I be embarrassed by the state of my house if someone "popped in" any time.
Seems like it's on the days I AM cleaning (moving furniture, doing floors, etc.) that it looks the worst.

Probably 80% of the time though it depends how you define "company ready". For company but not necessarily someone who's over for the first time ever and I really want things especially nice, our house is really neat most of the time. I'm anal...

Ha ha, rarely ever anymore these days.

It's clean but it's constantly un-tidy.

I clean my counters, table top every day.
Wipe everything down daily.
Vacuum & sweep other day.

We have a small house & no playroom so toys are EVERYWHERE!
At least, it means we have a happy, lived-in home, yes? ;)

I deep clean every weekend. When it's clean, no one ever comes by. ha

My house is always picked up so technically it's always company ready however I also don't stress the small things like having toys strewn about, books out, or other minor issues. The way I view company ready is so long as I don't have a filthy main area, kitchen or bathroom then it's good. I figure a family lives here, perfection is not going to happen, ever, so if company happens on over and things aren't 100% oh well. :D

Cindy R. said it very well !

My home is always ready for drop in friends. Its seldom ready for a "white glove inspector", but friends are always welcome.

Good luck to you and yours.

As long as you stay downstairs and don't go upstairs into the "bedroom zone" we're good. :) Bedrooms are only done once a week.

My house is always clean enough to have company over. I am not a clean freak. Trust me, I was the one known for the very cluttered desk when I was a teacher. Anyone who saw my work desk and has been to my home will instantly show that surprised face. "Oh, you really do know how to clean up?" Now that I am only teaching my son and doing my own personal studying, my study room and desk look much better than when I worked outside the home. I do need to keep the house vaccuumed daily since my son has asthma and is allergic to house dust. We have a cat. Fortunately, he is not allergic to her, but if her fur is lying around it is an easy magnet for the house dust. As for laundry, if I don't keep on it, we wouldn't have any dry clothing during the rainy season and the hot humid summer. I live in Japan. No luxury of using a dryer all the time. Clothing has to hang dry. Takes a lot of time to hang it up versus dumping it in the dryer. So weather forces me to keep on that. As for dishes, I always do them right away after eating or cooking. And I taught my son from the time he had his first toy that part of playing meant tidying up when finished. I made it fun by singing and having him put them in the toybox himself. Oh, how much time it took at the beginning to teach him that. I trully learned to be patient from teaching my son to clean up. But oh the benefits it yielded. My son cleans up his things all on his own without being told now. He is only 4. He has separate toyboxes for each kind of toy he has. At first I allowed him to have one box only at a time. If he wanted to play with something else, he had to clean up that box before changing his play. As he got older, I gradually introduced the idea of mixing toys from different boxes for play. At first I was worried that every toy he had would be out, but he has learned what is a good balance to keep. We have a rug that covers most of our living room floor. He is allowed to play on that rug. If he wants to race cars on the floor, the rug must be clear for us to walk on. And doorways must be kept clear for safety concerns. It takes him 5 minutes max to clean up his things when he finishes. Everything is in its place before going to bed. If company comes, he decides which toys he wants to share, the rest go to his room. The majority of his toys are stored in the living room. He has a very small bed room. We live in an apartment and guests have to ring in to get security clearance. That gives us plenty of time to push his toyboxes to his room if it is an unexpected visit. My son understands helping makes the family run smoothly, and he actually likes helping. Those nasty jobs like cleaning the bathtiles and scrubbing the toilet bowl are on a schedule. We have a little tile scraper we use after each shower to push extra water off the shower room floor and tub. Japanese bathrooms are so much more difficult to keep clean than western ones. Basically the whole room gets wet. Watch the movie "My neighbor Totoro" to get the idea. Every member must contribute to the smooth running of our family. My husband shares with cooking prep, dinner dishes, and does the bathroom cleaning. If someone needs help, we all help each other in order for every member to have more time to spend doing fun things together. So, we love gettting company anytime. If someone shows up during a meal, they get to join us. And yes, they must contribute to the cleaning up afterwards. Just how our family runs. Assigning everything its place, and keeping up on those household chores as an entire family really makes it possible to invite others into our lives at any time without feeling the stress. The only time we are not ready for unexpected company would be if someone is sick, or the few days after coming off being sick.

I'd say my house is NOT company ready 1-2 days per week - usually on the weekends when the clutter gets out of control (mostly from the kids, partly from me, rarely from my husband), but admittedly I 'cheat' and pay a cleaning lady to come once a week. The house does get rather cluttered though very quickly - like in 1 hour - usually after school and until after dinner, when my wonderful husband cleans the kitchen to spotless. Like someone else said, rarely would I be embarassed by the state of my house, however it seems like those are the days the neighbor friend 'pops in'. I have 2 close friends who's houses are always spotless, and just my luck, they are the 2 that would be most inclined to pop-in unannounced.

Sadly, only when I'm expecting company.

Holy Moly! Your house is company ready 1-2 times a week??!!! I wish! My house is truly company ready once a month when we have our regular poker night friends come over.

probably about 1-2 days a week. I usually do cleaning on Sunday afternoons, and monday the house is in good shape, come Tuesday - depends on how much we are home Monday night... and the rest of the week - forget it. Dishes are done, counters wiped down, bathroom counter/sink wiped in mornings with a bleach wipe - but that's about it. The dining room table fills up with clutter from school, work, mail, etc., the toys don't always find their way back and the laundry washed and folded during the week never seems to find it's way back upstairs to the bedrooms and ends up on the couche in the family room, which means more "use" of the couches in the living room - therefore a mess that follows..... Ah, you get the picture..it is what it is. I do LOVE a clean house, but I loves spending time with my children and husband first.

Probably for a couple of hours right after I have cleaned on a weekend when hubby takes care of the 7 month old. After that, there are toys all over the floor again. I try to keep the kitchen, dining room and bathroom clean all the time...ha...but that doesn't happen because my 7 month old will not nap during the day and if she does, it's only for about 15 minutes. I don have the time with this kid!

Only if company is expected or if it's my son's girlfriend and her mom. They don't care what the house looks like and they know how much we have going on and not a lot of time to pick up the house. And we have 4 people in about a 1000 sq foot house so we are practicly on eachother without guests. So not may come over.

I always like to have a heads up before people come by cause I like to pretend that I always have things together around here ;)

Honest answer - rarely. We suffer from CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) at my house. The bathrooms and kitchen are sanitary. The rest is in varying stages of domestic disaster, partly because if I have the choice between cleaning and, say, doing some good cooking, doing something with my kids, making something cool, learning something new, or doing something outside, I'll pick something other than cleaning nearly every time (which is also why my yard and garden look better than the inside of my house). Lucklily, I have some very good friends who understand that, while I might have to move something so that there's a place to sit down, they are always welcome, there's usually something good to eat, and while it looks a little crazy, my house is a good, safe interesting place for kids(and their grown-ups) to be.

We have, as the FLY Lady so aptly terms it, "CHAOS". "Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome". There are a lot of excuses: three people in a two BR apartment on one income, my husband has a book collection that (I am not exaggerating) borders on hoarder status (shelves and shelves from floor to ceiling and stacks taking up 1/4 of our living room), most of our stuff is so old that even when it's clean it still looks dirty, my child has an ASD which can be very draining, et cetera. The reality is that I am a SAHM who has numerous piles of her own unfinished business lying around, about which I can do plenty (but am not).

One would think that with all of my useless OCD-like manifestations that I could channel some into being a neat freak instead...

Almost never! We also have a small house and I tend to throw everything into my bedroom when I know someone is coming over. I always complain that I want the house to be "company ready" all the time, but with 2 littles under 4, I don't think it's possible. So nice to see this post and know that I'm not the only one who struggles with this!

Depends who the company is! A really good friend, I'm not too worried what they think of our mess :p

Anyway, I almost always keep the kitchen area "company ready" since that's the one thing that seems to me to be the most disgusting if left unattended and it's not too hard to give it a little attention daily. Then the rest of the house can be fairly quickly picked up if company is coming over (throw the toys in toy boxes, stack papers, etc.)

But mostly, my standards are pretty low anymore, so what I consider "company ready" nowdays wouldn't have cut it years ago (mostly before we had a child!!) We generally settle for "GOOD ENOUGH!" rather than super clean if someone's heading over!