Welcome to our home

Last week we had a visitor coming to town. I spent most of one day vacuuming, changing sheets, freshening the bathroom, taking out trash, doing dishes and laundry, and straightening everywhere.

For as long as I can remember this is just what we do. If someone is coming to visit our home, we clean and try to create a temporarily orderly home.  I mean, our house is generally not filthy, and everybody pitches in on daily and Saturday chores, but I don't mind a certain amount of chaos. If there is so much going on that the dishes from last night don't get done till tomorrow it hardly fazes me (unless there are no clean bowls for breakfast cereal). If the kids build a fort in the living room, I am happy to keep it there for two weeks. And don't get me started on unmade beds . . . I try at times to emulate my mother (who was and is a much, much better housekeeper than I am) and get everybody to make their beds.  But, to be honest, I don't really see the point.  I make my bed about half the time. And that's okay. Friends who are in and out of our house expect superhero toys to be scattered on the stairs and perpetual piles of laundry (one of the things that made me gnash my teeth when we decided to buy this house was the fact that the laundry room is visible from the front entryway, unless the door is kept closed, which it never is.  So, everyone who comes over knows that the Porters have dirty clothes. Lots of them.)

But, if someone is coming to stay, I excitedly and feverishly clean. And so, that brings me back to last week.
In the middle of cleaning bathrooms I had to stop to laugh. I knew that THIS particular visitor would not even be aware of my housecleaning efforts.  Brandon, our BYU student, was flying home for the weekend for his birthday and for missionary clothes shopping. He was just happy to be home and out of the dorms. I really questioned myself about why I thought the house had to be clean for Brandon. It wasn't like I was trying to impress him with my superhuman housekeeping skills. He certainly knows that our home is not usually clean throughout and is generally oblivious to many cleanliness details.  I mean, this is the same college freshman who admitted to me at Thanksgiving that he hadn't remembered yet to wash his sheets. And it didn't bother him.  Yuck!

But, that didn't change how I felt.  I organized corners of the house that hadn't been touched since . . . well, since the last time someone stayed for a few days!  Why bother? 

This is what I decided.  There are lots of ways to show love. To me, the nonverbal message sent by a clean home for visitors is "We love you. We are so glad you are here. We know that disorder will reign again during your stay in our home, but for a brief moment we want you to feel the peace of order and cleanliness."   I guess an additional message would be "I want to focus on you. Everything in the home is orderly for now, so I can concentrate on hanging out with you."  My kids have protested at helping with the pre-visitor cleaning over the years, but I have told them and retold them that it's a matter of respect. We offer our best to our visitors, hoping that they will feel comfortable in our home.  I have always felt like this even though I can't think of any visitor we have ever had at our house who would have thought poorly of us for undusted tables and piles of laundry. Our family and friends who visit us are aware that four kids live in our house, and families make messes. 

I wish I could apply this same thinking to every day, and have our home be a mythical haven of sparkling clean surfaces and sweet smells. But that is so not my reality. Keeping the home in order is one of my daily to-dos and priorities, but by no means is it the top priority.  I do my best, but life is busy.  Many years ago, when Dan and I were first married, I wrote this in my journal: "I will never let having a clean house be more important than having a good relationship with my family."  I really believe that.

But, I always have and always will prepare a clean abode when a visitor comes to hang out.  So come visit.  I promise the house will be clean (temporarily)!