Congrats Perkins!
Ah, does anything motivate household cleaning like the prospect of guests stopping by? When my cousin mentioned she hadn't ever seen my apartment the other day I told her now is the time, since it's in rare suitable-for-company shape. Then today I found out that her sisters (and maybe the two new babies) might stop by in the morning too, and since getting home I've been in a frenzy of cleaning.
So far tonight I've:
• super-glued the frame of the big print from my living room back into shape
• put up the clean dishes from my dishwasher
• cut up an old pair of jeans into cleaning rags
• scrubbed my kitchen and bathroom sinks and the surrounding countertops
• given the toilet a cursory cleaning
• washed my shower curtain
• scrubbed the microwave and the cabinets above it that had accumulated airborne grease from the stove
• put Christmas wrapping paper, bows, and cards back in the closet
• done 2 loads of laundry and rolled up clean towels for the bathroom
• sorted and trashed about 6 months' worth of junk mail
• thrown away a year's worth of accumulated catalogs and scrubbed the coffee table they were previously covering
• straightened up my desk and thrown away loose papers
• organized DVDs
• swapped out the plastic sheet my anemic snapdragons were perched on for a decorative ceramic bowl
• set up a little house-of-cards assemblage of various pretty greeting cards that had previously been piled up on my breakfast cart (not coincidentally hiding some cables and such on the bar in my kitchen)
• tidied up my drawing desk
If I start breaking out the steam vacuum to do my floors at 11:15 at night y'all will send an exorcist over to drive Monica Geller's spirit out of my body, right?