"20 Minutes from Company"

Have you ever heard that phrase?  I hadn't until very, very recently. When I heard it for the very first time, it clicked immediately. I felt like "That's exactly how I want my house to be!" We like to entertain so much that the thought of having the house clean enough to literally accept guests within just a few minutes is very appealing to me.

I generally like to have a clean house anyways. It makes me feel more calm. Having piles of stuff, dust bunnies, or Georgia Tumbleweeds blowing through the house makes me feel stressed, anxious, and uptight. I don't like to live in that sort of environment, and just being in my dirty/messy house can create it.

This was not the environment I grew up in, though. Our house was usually messy AND dirty. I remember one time telling my mom that a friend was on her way over and how much she freaked out. She started piling dirty dishes into the dishwasher, oven, microwave, etc. Anything she could stuff and close, she did. She also then started a sink full of big pots/stuff that wouldn't fit other places and began washing them. I didn't realize how embarrassing that would have been for her (if the friend had shown up and it still be messy) until I got older and had a house of my own. Now I can't imagine living like that. (If you know my mom or ever meet her, please don't tell her I shared that story!)

I have often dreamed of having other people clean my house, and I recently got the chance to experience it. I got a Groupon for a cleaning crew and jumped at the chance. I was less-than-thrilled with their performance, however, and it's made the dream of having other people clean my house lose its luster. I'm back to imagining myself doing all those things. yay.

But now that Austin is in school 9-2 every Thursday, I will have more time to get things done un-interuptedly. My plan is to spend that sans-Austin-time alternating between being productive and being non-productive. Every other week, I will have about 4 hours to spend cleaning the house top-to-bottom, which should leave it always in a relatively clean and orderly state. 4 hours is enough time for me to vacuum and dust the whole house as well as do both bathrooms which are the main things that are hard to do with a baby around.

And now that I have a way to describe how I'd like my house to be, I can give my family a phrase to live by. 

This doesn't mean, of course, that we will be perfect. Nor does it mean that the house might not sometimes get 'Over an Hour from Company.' It simply means that we will have a way of describing our efforts of keeping our house relatively clean. "20 Minutes from Company" means to me that a quick sweep of picking up stuff, wiping down kitchen counters, and checking the guest toilet will result in a house ready to receive guests. And we certainly won't be stuffing dirty dishes into the oven.