Saturday, January 14, 2012

Say Yes to the Mess

 I invited someone over the other day and then I almost cancelled because my house (as usual) is such a mess.  I try, but the reality is, I just can’t keep up.


Here’s the challenge for today: invite someone over.   It sounds simple, right?  Unless you’re going to spend days obsessing (and stressing) over making sure every detail is perfect.  It’s ok to do that... if you enjoy it.  But, if you’re like me, and you don’t and if you’ve been living in an isolation chamber because you’re afraid of people seeing the real state of things in your home...

Stop it.

 Stop obsessing over how clean your home is and just do it.  Don’t wait until you find the perfect little holiday invitations, or the best appetizer recipe.  You don’t need an excuse to do it (stop using that as your excuse not to!) 

If you can, run a sanitizing wipe over your toilet, rinse your sink, and hang a clean hand towel on the rack in your bathroom.  Wipe down the l gunk left on the table from your kids’ breakfast food fight. Maybe vacuum.  If you have one, light a candle.

  In other words, do the bare minimum.  And call it good.

Then, go next door and invite someone over for tea, or for lunch, or just to catch up (gasp) with no formal invitation, no food- just...you.

If you’re a neat freak and the thought of this makes your skin crawl, don’t worry, your house already looks better than anyone is expecting it to.  And, if you’re messy like me, you do run the risk of being deemed a slob by your neat freak friends.  But, can we all just agree to cut each other some slack in favor of spending some time together? 

Because, we don’t have to get it perfect to get it right. 

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