I have made more progress cleaning. I’m concentrating on the four rooms the guests will spend the most time in (living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom), and pretty much ignoring everything else: maybe they’ll want a tour of the whole house and maybe they won’t, but I am working with limited time and even more limited enthusiasm. I am also remembering when I was getting ready to go on my trip with Elizabeth, and I wanted to get all caught up on laundry before we went, and I left all her laundry and my laundry for last so we’d have exactly what we needed for packing—and the washing machine broke right after I’d finished everyone else’s stuff and right before I’d gotten to ours. Most-important stuff FIRST, not LAST, that is the goal now.
One of the best helps is making everyone clean together at the same time. We’ve done it a few times (we’re aiming for once a day until the guests get here), and it’s surprising what a difference it makes. Each person chooses whatever they want to do, but I emphasized ahead of time that we were looking for tasks that made the biggest impact. The littler kids barely have any effect on anything, but they DO make SOME difference, and the two big kids are big helps, and it’s hugely good for morale to have EVERYONE CLEANING and not JUST ME. (It’s something I’d like to keep doing, maybe an hour every Saturday or something, but why don’t I tell you about it AFTER we actually implement such a plan and keep up with it for awhile, instead of when it’s just me assuming Future Me will be happy to do all that work.) We put the radio on loud and it’s not really FUN but it’s satisfying, and things definitely look better when we’re done. The children are starting to say MY lines, things like “Can’t people put things AWAY when they’re done with them?” and “Ug, look at all these PENCILS! They go in the MUG, not ALL OVER THE PLACE!”
Another excellent development: the annual ladybug invasion has begun, which means it will appear that the speckles up high in the corners are from THIS year, rather than still there from last year!
I removed considerable stress by deciding that for the two dinners, we will make our specialties: tacos (me) and pizza (Paul). Those are the only two meals we seem to be able to make in huge quantities AND that the children will eat without complaining and/or acting as if we normally eat only tacos and pizza (“What’s THIS?”—suspiciously looking at carrot shred as if utterly foreign substance). These are not the meals I think of as ideal for (1) company or (2) people in their mid-70s, but so be it. Making something we know how to make (and know how to shop for) will be much, much, much more peaceful from an Inexperienced Hostess point of view—and maybe they will LOVE it and be GLAD it isn’t Company Food. Also, these are both meals we make with child helpers, which makes us AND our children look good. And the tacos are highly customizable, which is nice for guests, and the pizza can be sliced small and I’ll make a salad, in case they go lightly on pizza-like foods. But Paul’s aunt has made several nervous, self-deprecating comments about eating too much, so my hope is that they are plump and love food and will think of tacos/pizza as treats. I still have to decide about desserts.
For lunches, I’m doing what one of my grandmothers did (perhaps the other grandmother did it as well, but I specifically remember it with only one), which is to put out a great abundance of miscellaneous things and let everyone help themselves: three kinds of bread, peanut butter, two kinds of jam, two kinds of deli meat, two kinds of deli cheese, mayo and mustard, cottage cheese, applesauce, grapes, dried cherries, carrot sticks and celery sticks, nuts, sunflower seeds, chips, crackers, cookies. It’s fun, it’s flexible, it lets everyone eat how they want without making me feel like I have to Guess Correctly, and it’s easy to use up whatever’s left over after the guests leave.
For awhile we did 20 minutes of cleaning as a family after dinner each night. We had a playlist that was exactly 20 minutes long so small kids could tell how far into it we were and when we were done – although we often ended up getting in a groove and would keep going for longer.
One adult would do the dinner dishes, which had to be done anyway, but is more pleasant when everyone else is also cleaning. Even though 20 minutes isn’t a lot (though that was sort of the point!) and my kids are pretty little, it made a noticeable difference. I loved it. We kind of drifted out of the habit. I’ll have to bring it back!
We do 15 minute family clean up! I like your idea of a play list better than ours of just setting the stove timer :) We’ve definitely let it fall to the wayside. Case in point: on Meatball Monday I was in the kitchen for around three hours (with a break to eat what I made, yay) and it was definitely not good for my morale. Here’s to making sure Chicken Thigh Thursday doesn’t end the same way. I’ve actually never called tonight’s meal that but Meatball Monday is for real. I think I might just start making chicken thighs every Thursday! I’m not kidding. “Future Me” needs all the help she can get right now!
My mom always called that sort of lunch/dinner a “grazing”, as in, “We’re just grazing for dinner tonight”. I have always been somewhat amused by that, but I suppose I wouldn’t want to use it with Company for fear they would infer that I think of them as animals that usually graze. My kids call it a “mixed-up dinner” as that’s what my son called it once when he was 4, so it has stuck around.
I try to get our kids to do a group clean every couple of weeks (surface and floors need to be picked up so our cleaners can vacuum/dust/wipe). My 8 year old isn’t bad, my 6 year old is horrible. She tries to manipulate the situation by crying the whole time we’re cleaning so that she doesn’t have to do anything, but has failed to realize that this just means that she has to clean alone, sans music and dancing, once the rest of us are done. For some reason she just cannot get that through her head.
I love the lunch buffet-ish idea. It makes it so much less awkward if you’re a guest and you don’t like something imo — you can just not take it! phew. so much less anxiety that way.
Random/curious question – how come you don’t post pictures of the kids anymore? I wonder what they look like now that they’re old! (is that weird? lol)
I don’t think I ever made a deliberate decision about it—more like I was writing less about the kinds of issues that seemed natural to illustrate with a kid photo. But I suppose also it’s partly that they’re in school now, so it seems more likely that they could be recognized from a photo on the blog.
Nice lunch idea! Low pressure for everyone. No awkwardness if there is something someone doesn’t want. Sounds like you are making very good progress.
Have you done a guest prep Target run yet? I always like to have spare toothbrushes on hand. I feel like it’s one of those things that people are likely to forget and also very much want to have.
At our house we do what I like to call “the 10 minute tidy.” I set some parameters first, then set the timer for 10 minutes and everyone cleans as fast as they can for that time. It’s amazing what 6 people can accomplish in a concentrated 10 minute block!
My kids call that kind of lunch/meal a “snack supper” and they love it. I like to put out salami, pepperoni, a couple of types of cheese, veggie & dip tray, fresh fruit, etc. Afterwards I will put out the same sort of snack/finger food desserts. Fun and tasty for everyone and low stress for me!
At our house we have the three song clean. Three medium to longish songs is about 10 to 15 minutes. We tried to do it daily and now it’s a few days a week which actually makes a difference over time. I like your lunch idea a lot.
I love the cleaning idea and I’m going to give it a go. All working in the same general area seems like a good way to keep it fun and also keep an eye on things.
When I was growing up, that sort of lunch was called “bread and put”, as in, you get some bread and you…
I love that cleaning idea too – every time I hear it. Have we actually done it yet? We have not. I will not get depressed about how I’m procrastinating my life away and suck at everything now, I will NOT.
I love so much that you are hoping for fat guests who love pizza – this would be a great thing on so many levels, would it not? I have to read back now to figure out why you’re having guests and don’t know if they’re fat or not already, which I’m finding disproportionately amusing, which is good because it’s eight-thirty and my son just informed me that he needs cookies to bring to class tomorrow.
My kids have daily chores etc. but for big jobs I like call it a 30 (or 1 hour) cleaning blitz. Everyone gets a specific task and they are required to focus all of their energy on it for the allotted time. Knowing there is a definite end time motivates them.
I was thinking I should try this for an hour on a Saturday. Now I’m thinking an hour would be too long for my crew. But some of your commenters’ 20-minute and 3-song suggestions are excellent as well!
Tacos and pizza for dinner! What could be better than those? Nothing!
I think your meal ideas are perfect! May I suggest a similar dessert option: ice cream sundaes! Vanilla ice cream with lots of different toppings. It’s super fun to shop in the bulk section for smallish amounts of lots of options along with, perhaps, chocolate and butterscotch toppings. Like the other options, one can make a modest dessert or heap everything on. And it feels really fun!
That is also more or less how I feed myself lunch.