Cleaning In Detail When Expecting Company Part Two

A few tips for the good housewife.

When your best friend comes to visit for the weekend, you do not necessarily have to clean in detail the whole house – she would probably not notice the little stain on the bottom right corner of the curtain or the few drops of water around the sink. Or at least she will be kind about it and not mention it. This, however, is not the case if you mother-in-law is at the door, waiting to get in and take a quick judgmental look around, is it? That’s why it is good to spend a good amount of time on the small things when you know you are having guests over. Here are a few tips to guide you on your way to perfection.

Look down.

Before you begin with the washing, wiping and vacuuming the floors, take a soapy sponge and work on the ledges of the floor. These would get a lot of different kinds of dirtiness from stains to pet hair. After wiping the soapy foam off with a wet towel, it is good to dry the surface with a dry towel or paper to avoid water drops and marks. You can do the same on stairs if you have some at your home. Since you are already kneeling on the floor, you might as well take a look at the legs of the furniture. Pet hairs will get stuck around the legs of the sofas and the tables. And if you have children these areas are automatically being transformed into crumb magnet.

All you need to take care of these is Scotch tape and nothing else.

Last, but not least, you should check the wall outlets for stains and other dirtiness. Plugging laptops, cell phones and other electronic gadgets in and out will leave finger prints all over the outlets, which you should clean with a rag and universal cleaning product.

Clean on eye level.

After completing your work on the floors and the low part of the room, what you should do is sit where your guest will be sitting and take a look around from their point of view. All items, such as photo frames that need straightening up and small figurines that need to be cleaned, should be looked at from all different points of view to make sure you have not missed or misplaced something.

You might thing that most people would never notice whether you have cleaned the wall outlet from fingerprints or not, but it is the things that guests do not see that make you a good housewife. Think of it like that – nobody notices that you have vacuum the floor, but it is highly possible that it would be noticed if you didn’t. Same with details, only here people might actually praise your work on the small things if they are perfectionists themselves.